


Idiot Boy

by Ossicle



Series: Selkie Skin [3]
Category: One Piece
Genre: Alternate Universe - Shapeshifters, Backstory, Childhood, Dark Fantasy, M/M, Selkies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-15
Updated: 2020-06-06
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:33:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 7
Words: 20,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23596915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ossicle/pseuds/Ossicle
Summary: Law is a selkie, Kidd is no one. They find in each other a way to endure the brutality of their lives, and eventually, a way to return to the sea.Part 3: Backstory and beyond for the human half of the story. Kidd was raised in the cold underbelly of a shitty village in the New World.
Relationships: Eustass Kid/Trafalgar D. Water Law
Series: Selkie Skin [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/997935
Comments: 33
Kudos: 57





	1. Kidd

**Author's Note:**

> Okay I know that I haven't even finished part 2 but I think I've lost the thread of that one, and I've been sitting on this mostly finished draft of the Kidd backstory for like two years. I was almost not going to post because I'm neurotic and whatever, but now is the time!
> 
> Explanation of warnings:   
> Rape tag for underage rape scenes in ch 2 and 5, and for pervasive themes of sexual violence. Underage tag for teenage KidLaw. Rape tag will never apply to main pairing. Violence is kind of low level graphic throughout, but not in the intentionally porny way my meatpanic fics are. This is written to be story- and character-focused, even if its brutal in parts. But still, take care.

“Don’t be an idiot, Kidd,” Genzo tried again, even as he handed his nephew the little package of mutton and a jar of lamp oil to take back home with him. “It’s easier to heat one house than two, and there’s an extra bed here. Your mother would want you to—”

“My fuckin mother ain’t here.” The rough-looking young redhead took the supplies from his uncle and wiped his nose on his sleeve. The cold was getting into him more and more. He couldn’t get completely warm anymore, and his throat was starting to get scratchy. Fucked if he was staying around  _ this _ place all night as well as day, though.

“Hmph. Well.” Genzo gave up with a gruff noise of disapproval.

Kidd climbed the hill to his mother's distant house, like he did every evening after he'd finished work in his uncle's smithy. The walk was always its own strange ordeal. Sometimes it was a gauntlet of taunting distractions and weird traps laid along the trail—pieces of animals that everyone said were his work, or packs of bored village boys looking to start shit. Sometimes it was quiet, and he'd walk along steadily the whole way with nothing going wrong, and then run the last few steps past the stone wall. 

Today was one of the quiet ones. Which was its own kind of nerve-wracking, since all the shit that could've been going wrong, but wasn't, was probably just saving itself up for later. The days had been getting shorter recently. The sky was almost dark by the time his house came into view. In the fading light, Kidd could see a scruffy figure waiting by the low stone wall. He slowed his steps to a casual stroll and evaluated the visitor quickly. The same asshole as usual—one of the few 'gentlemen callers' his mother had banned for getting rough with her. He wasn't bulky or tall or anything, but definitely still a match for a sprout like Kidd.

“Boy! I need a hand with something, wanna earn a couple copper?” 

Kidd barely gave this a roll of his eyes. He walked past the man without a word.

The slimy fucker couldn't take a hint, though. He followed, yammering inanely. “Getting cold, huh, early winter I'd say. There's that twinge in my hip, it never lies, it—hey! Boy!!” he shouted through the firmly-shut door.

Kidd waited on the other side, fire poker clutched in his hand.

“That's no way to treat your elders!” the man called.

Kidd almost laughed. Fuck. That was funny.

He stayed ready behind the door until he heard the man dragging his feet back down the path. Then he sighed and looked around at the poor state of the house’s defenses. Busted latch on the door, and only a fire poker to wield? Kidd hadn't put too much thought into it before, but none of these creeps had dared follow him past the wall yet. He’d been living up here in his mother’s absence for a little over a year and a half, but the vultures had only caught his scent recently. Nothing he couldn't handle, though.

* * *

“Need a new latch up at the house,” Kidd mentioned to his uncle the next day.

“Well you'd better stop showing up late and taking off early then, hadn't you,” Genzo growled, shoving a leather apron at him and pointing to the day's orders.

“I get the fuckin work mostly done,” Kidd protested. “Can't cost that much.”

“Five copper is the usual. OR, show up on time for a week and you can have it."

"For a week…"

"And you know," Genzo pressed hopefully, "it'd be best if you just stayed here, eh, to be sure you're up early and fed and all.”

Ugh. And deal with his aunt's snippy bullshit? Kidd sniffed.

“Fuck that.”

He’d lived with his childless great uncle and aunt on and off his whole life, but his aunt had always resented him. And now that he’d grown as tall as her, she absolutely refused to have him in the house unless Genzo was right there. Which was dumb—Kidd had never once followed through on his threats to bite her fingers off. She was just crazy.

“Young’un, I'm not just sayin it to—” Genzo began.

“Yeah, whatever.”

"...hmph."

* * *

The unwelcome guest proved persistent.

“Boy, I don't know  _ no _ one that passes up on easy money like you do.”

Kidd almost dropped the log he'd been feeding into the fire. It was dark, he was inside his lonely house, and that fucking creeper was back again, banging on his fucking front door.

“Listen, FIVE copper,” the man called through the wooden slats. “Got it right here.”

Kidd sucked his teeth and thought for a moment.

“Haha, that's right,” the man leered when Kidd opened the door, log in hand. “So, how ab— _ pPLLKh— _ ”

* * *

Kidd spilled five copper onto the work bench the next day as his uncle sat balancing his accounts.

“What's this,” the crag-faced old man grunted through his mustache. He stared at the little pile. “Boy…”

“You said five copper,” Kidd mumbled, and tried to escape back to his work before his uncle noticed his injuries from the previous night. He'd gotten the scruffy man beat eventually, but the first strike had fallen wrong and Kidd had taken some damage.

Genzo’s quiet tone stopped him. “How did you get this.”

“I just had it.”

“No. Kidd. How did…  _ what _ did you do to get this.”

Kidd pretended not to know what the old man was asking. “Took it off some kid a while back.”

Genzo breathed out heavily but went back to his counting. “Get your aunt to sew up that cut and then get the hell to work.”

* * *

The old man came up later that day to install the latch himself—a heavy one with a bar. They nailed the side door closed too.

Kidd sat on the stone wall and surveyed the house with a new eye. You could see who was coming up the road with a couple minutes’ notice. Weapons were a problem… he wasn't old enough to be allowed his own knife, like most adults in the village carried. But maybe a bigger fire poker? Something that didn't look like a weapon.

Genzo finished the work and shouldered his kit. “Kidd, you know what’s better’n a heavy door?”

“Heavy stick.”

“A fuckin family.”

Kidd spat over the wall. “Lemme know if you see one.”

He earned himself a hard cuff in the ear. 

“I’m saying you got people, and a place! And if you’d just fuckin stay in it, everyone would be better off,” Genzo barked.

“You try that speech on Belle too?” Kidd shifted down the wall to avoid another blow at the mention of his wayward mother.

“Your mother’s problems don’t gotta be yours, idiot. Maybe it’s better she’s gone away again, huh? She can’t fuck you up any worse than she already has.”

“Don’t you fuckin talk about her like that!” Kidd jumped down from the wall with his fists balled, but didn’t dare try the craggy man. Genzo wasn’t what he’d once been, but he was still a blacksmith with an unrivalled right arm and zero tolerance for bullshit.

The mustache twitched downward as the old man regarded his snarling nephew. Eventually he scoffed and turned back toward the village. “Get your ass to the smithy on time tomorrow. I ain’t touching whatever that money’s caught up in, so you’ll be getting a bigger share of the work starting now.”

Kidd took his rage out on the wall, but it was about as yielding as the old man.

* * *

He did start getting to the smithy more or less on time, though. Things continued as before.

No one came to reclaim the five copper pieces. Not the scruffy man, or whoever his family was, or any of the village’s council members. Before the cut had even started to close, Kidd had forgotten about the man and moved on to other conflicts.

Like the neighbor kids calling his mother a whore.

“You don’t even know what that means,” Kidd snorted at the three little shitstains hiding behind the stone wall between their properties. They were too young to beat on and get away with it, he decided reluctantly.

“Means you pee in her mouth and she has to drink it!” a heavy-cheeked boy ventured, and they all tittered.

“...well, you know what  _ your _ mom’s doing right now?” Kidd jumped up to crouch on the wall. “Hm?”

They fell over each other to back away from the wall. They looked at each other.

“She’s helping Uncle Sir with his mule!” one boy blabbed, and the others shoved him.

Kidd laughed. “'Uncle sir,' huh. Listen, I’ll teach you guys some new words...”

“Get away from him! Boys!! Don’t speak to him!” The woman in question came hurrying over toward them, squawking in fury.

“Your brats got dirty mouths,” Kidd sneered.

“Don't you try blaming them for your nonsense.” She gathered up her brood and herded them away from him, like he was contagious or something.

“They called my mother a whore!” Kidd yelled after them, clenching his fists.

“Well! It's true, isn't it,” she sniffed.

A few choice words and a trip to the council house later, Kidd was once again sitting in the square with his tongue tip nailed to the bell post—council's punishment for calling the woman a 'cousin-fucking mutt mill.' Which he thought was unfair because that was also true.


	2. Vultures

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warnings: underage rape scene and detailed aftermath.

It got cold fast.

Kidd climbed up the hill one night, crunching through frost-crisped grass as the sky darkened. It was gonna be fuckin cold tonight—there were no clouds in the sky, no wind and no moon, just empty cold nothing all the way up to the stars. The houses below him clung to their hillside like limpets on a stone, peaceful and distant. 

_Pathetic._

He flipped them all off and climbed up and up toward his own dark house.

But it wasn’t dark… he could see light flickering within and smoke curling from the chimney. He ran the rest of the way, almost dropping the oil and meat. He blew through the door expecting to see Bellemere sitting before the fire, feet on the table and pipe in her mouth… but it wasn’t her. 

It was the Kizaru family patriarch. 

“Your mom not around, ehhh,” the lanky man drawled. 

_You know she isn’t,_ thought Kidd. _Everyone knows when she goes to sea._

He was a councilman, and head of one of the wealthiest families in the village, so Kidd had to tread lightly. He left his supplies on the table and moved around to the opposite side of the fire, ignoring his unwelcome visitor. He pulled the iron pot off its hook.

“Thought I’d come by and see how she was doing. Bad frost, eh? And her, all alone up here.”

“She’s not alone, she has me.”

“So she does, so she does. Fine young man, taking care of his mother. Of course…” he leaned on one fist. “There’s no one to take care of you.”

Kidd built up the fire, clutching the poker he’d made and not replying.

“No need to be like that. I’m just looking out for the less fortunate of my little village. I help your mother out a lot, you know that.”

“You pay to fuck her, like everyone else.”

“Don’t be crass. Everyone’s gotta do their part somehow, eh? Keep the village going.”

“Whatever.”

He tsked at Kidd’s firmly turned back. “You got in another fight, huh? That’s a bad cut on your chin, there.”

“People start shit.”

“Hm. Like my herdsman, I suppose,” the bored expression sharpened, “who tells me that you attacked him on our own land and stole five copper pieces from him.”

“I didn't fucking go near your land,” Kidd shot over his shoulder. _That lying fucking prick…_

“Hah. No, I didn't think you had. You know what I think?”

“I…” Kidd felt trapped suddenly. He avoided those staring eyes and tried not to seem nervous.

“I think he came up here looking to get something outta ya and found more than he could handle. That what happened?”

“No.”

“No? So you did come and attack him?”

“No...”

The long fingers steepled at pursed lips, as Kizaru pretended to consider this. “I’m not trying to accuse you of anything. I'm just worried about the trouble you seem to be attracting, in your vulnerable state.”

“I can handle myself.” Kidd turned back to the fire.

Kidd found those long fingers reaching out to turn his chin toward the light. He lashed out with the poker, but Kizaru easily caught his arm and twisted until it dropped. He loomed over Kidd, making him suddenly aware of how small he was. Bird bones and scraped knees despite all his tough talk.

“That what you think? I’ll tell you something. No one survives on their own. You leave yourself exposed like this, and shit happens.”

“Fuck OFF. Get your hands off me, I’ll _kill_ you! I’ll fucking kill you…”

“I’m offering you protection, idiot boy.”

Kidd jammed his elbow into the man’s rib cage and heard a grunt of pain. He went for the poker again but a sharp crack to the head made the floor rush up to meet him.

Everything swam. Dimly, he felt himself being rolled out flat on his stomach and cold air hitting his back. Kizaru was mumbling something. The poker lay in front of Kidd but he couldn’t muster the coordination to even raise a hand. His fingers just clawed dirt when he tried.

 _Fuck…_ Was that it? Was that _really_ all he could fucking do to save himself, when it came down to it? 

Self-loathing rose in his throat. 

He always thought he’d just… just find some burst of strength, some way out… _something._

His churning thoughts were abruptly wiped away by searing pain. He heard screaming.

“Oh come on. You’re fine.”

He blacked out.

* * *

Kidd surfaced in a blur of pain and confusion. 

“BOY. Come on now. HEY.”

Kidd blinked and tried to wake up more… until the pain hit him. The mass on top of him seemed impossibly huge compared to his own small, pathetic, _so,_ so breakable body. It impacted against him until he felt like he was shattering—

* * *

When Kidd came to again, foggy-headed and lying on the floor, he was alone. It was cold… The fucking fire must be out again. He pushed himself up with a groan and stiffness seized him. 

Then pain, and memory.

His breath stopped. He was suddenly, overwhelmingly aware of the emptiness of the house, and the dead silence outside. No wind, no moon, no clouds. He froze and waited for a long moment, like an animal straining to hear a predator’s footfalls. But there was nothing, everywhere, nothing, for one painful heartbeat and then the next, and the next... 

A log fell in the cold fireplace and he flinched, and them felt stupid.

"Move, just move. _Do_ something."

He stumbled to his feet and his legs gave out.

“Fuck! Fuck… fuck…”

Tears were dripping off his face. _No, not that, you fucking idiot. No crying,_ he scolded himself. Radiating weakness like a fucking beacon in all that stark silence. 

"Just stop it. Move."

He managed to stand and straighten his clothes. He had some vague notion to tidy things, erase the evidence. He went to gather up the mutton… and froze. On the table next to him was the little jar of lamp oil his uncle had given him, open and dripping onto the floor—

* * *

In the next instant, Kidd was suddenly outside the house, without his furs, running flat out. He caught himself, and tried to force himself to slow down and walk, so it didn't feel like something was chasing him. 

The sky hung huge and threatening over him as he hurried down the hill, silence and emptiness dogging his too-loud steps.

He stopped before the door of his uncle’s house. He could see through the sheephide over the windows that it was warm and bright inside, but now that he’d gotten here, the prospect of walking in like this was unbearable. Dragging his battered self into all that brightness and scrutiny... His uncle would see. And his aunt. They’d know he’d been—

* * *

Kidd's mind skipped and he found himself on his knees, on the ground, vomit pooling in front of him. He started to shake.

"Sh-shit…"

The door swung open and he squinted in the brightness.

“Kidd? What the hell are you doing, boy?” 

His aunt Muriel bustled out and stopped. She stared. Kidd knew what he must look like, all bloodied and hunched over a puddle of puke, tears cutting tracks through the mess on his face.

The old woman looked around as if for prying eyes. “Get inside. _Now,_ boy. Come.”

* * *

Muriel left him alone while he cleaned himself, thank god. She just puttered around the fire muttering to herself and throwing dark looks at the state of him. She might have said something but he kept missing it.

He redressed stiffly in borrowed clothes and she went to throw out the soiled water. This time he heard her.

“I don’t know what you expected.”

* * *

Genzo returned after midnight, from visiting across the village. He stopped short when he came in and saw Kidd sitting up on the corner bench that doubled as a bed, face firmly in his crossed arms. Muriel tugged Genzo back outside and they spoke in urgent whispers. 

Kidd clenched his teeth. The panic had abated, and now anger was bubbling up.

“Boy,” his uncle summoned him when they came back in. 

Kidd ignored him.

Genzo sighed and sat at the table. He slowly loaded up a pipe bowl with tobacco, then sat there with it unlit, fidgeting.

“Who was it,” he questioned in a neutral tone.

“Kizaru.”

His uncle let out a weary breath and finally lit the pipe. More silence. Kidd knew what he was going to say. That they didn’t have enough sway in the village to face down Kizaru and his entire family. That no one would believe the delinquent son of a whore anyway. That he had left himself open, up in his mother's lonely little house. A place where men went for pleasure, after all. What did he expect?

“We can’t make more trouble,” is what Genzo said instead.

“I’ll fucking kill him,” Kidd hissed, raising his head.

His aunt scoffed. “You think he won’t bring the whole Kizaru clan down on our heads? You’ll lose more than your dignity—”

Kidd was on his feet. “I’LL FUCKING KILL _YOU.”_

“KIDD.” There was a hard look on Genzo’s face. He was still calm, sitting at the table. “Sit down.”

“I CAN’T.”

“And keep your voice down. You want the whole damn village to find out? You want to drag this out in the open?”

Kidd stopped short. “...no.” _God no._

“Then stay here. Hold your tongue. Pray he does the same.”

Rage and pain were welling up in Kidd’s chest, but even stronger was the crushing shame. He curled back into himself, defeated.

“Boy, you hear me?”

“Yes.”

“You’ll cause no trouble.”

“No.”

* * *

Kidd stayed. He worked in the smithy and tended the animals and slept on the bench. He healed. He hardened. He caused no trouble—or no trouble connected to Kizaru. But he bit an older boy’s ear half off, killed a dog that had been set on him by a neighbor, smashed all of his aunt’s lamp oil jars and threatened her almost daily. 

Genzo had given up trying to correct or punish Kidd by this time, and simply sent him to sleep in the smithy when he was too feral to handle. But he _never_ suggested Kidd go back to his own house.

Winter passed.

* * *

As the snow melted Kidd began to venture out to his old haunts again—the cliff and coast, and the mountain peak. He didn’t return to his house.

It was on the path to the peak one day that a voice called out behind him. He felt a paralyzing chill freeze his limbs.

“Kidd! You’ve gotten tall fast, boy.”

He turned stiffly to face Kizaru, who was coming up the path after him. The lanky man ambled up and stopped just short of him, close enough that Kidd could smell his sour breath. He stood utterly still.

“Well? You gone mute?”

“Sir.” Kidd replied woodenly.

“There we go. You haven’t been by your house recently, I suppose. I’d left something there for you but it almost seems that you’re trying to avoid me.” His face held its pleasant, half-lidded smile as he held out a hand. 

So he’d been going back, looking for him. Lurking there... Kidd’s stomach turned. He didn’t move to take whatever was being offered.

Kizaru pulled Kidd’s hand out, palm up, and dropped something cold into it.

“It’s a little much for the service rendered. But I’m a generous man. I won’t let it be said that I’d ever take advantage of anyone.” He smiled sickeningly, but then frowned at Kidd's silence. “Well, don’t be rude. Thank me.”

Kidd met his gaze, and for the millionth time, compared them. He was almost up to the man's eye level now—he had indeed grown fast. And though the other was strong, he wasn’t bulky either. They were alone. Kidd was armed with a small dagger, which was better than a poker… But even if Kidd could get him on the ground and drive the dagger into his fucking EYE, it was never just the two of them to account for. Kizaru’s family and influence far overshadowed his own. And… people would figure it out. Everyone would _know._

Kizaru caught his evaluating expression. “Don’t be an idiot, boy.”

Kidd was vaguely aware of lunging, not even thinking to draw the knife. Half a moment later he was spinning back into the mud, deflected easily by the old soldier.

"You… fucking… cunt! I'll kill you if you try and… try and…" Kidd spluttered, wiping mud from his face and glaring up at the man standing there with crossed arms.

"You know, you could've made all this a pleasant exchange. I'm trying to show my good—"

" _F-fuck_ you."

“...You're sorely in need of correcting,” the towering man growled, "And don't think for a moment that I won't find an occasion." He glanced around at their exposed surroundings and sniffed in irritation. He turned away toward the village.

Kidd watched him go, not daring to move.

"Don’t forget your payment, eh, boy.” Kizaru strode off.

Once he'd disappeared down the hill, Kidd thumped back into the mud, suddenly exhausted. He felt meltwater soaking the back of his head as he stared up into the cloudless sky with his heart beating in his ears.

* * *

The cold item was a silver coin. Kidd threw it in the fucking sea and punched the cliff wall until his fists bled.

He didn’t go back up the path to the peak again.

* * *

The air was warm and the snow long gone when Kidd finally dared to return to his house. He clutched his dagger as he climbed the hill again.

There was someone there... Smoke was curling out of the chimney. Gripping the knife, Kidd burst through the door, ready to kill whoever was on the other side.

“Captain Kidd! You're getting tall, love.” Bellemere craned her neck and grinned from her chair in front of the fire, chewing a pipe reed but not smoking. Her hair was red as ever, but shorter. She looked beyond tired.

“Mom??”

“Yeah, uh...” She looked at him curiously. Kidd never called her that. “You’ll have to come over here, hun, it’s not easy for me to get up and down in this state.”

He went to her and bent down to accept her kiss. She raised her arms to cup his face and the cloak fell aside. She was very, very pregnant. The rest of her wasn’t any larger than normal, but her belly was grotesquely distended. 

He stared. She chuckled.

“Yeah, so this… this can sometimes happen. But you’ll have a little brother soon! Or a sister. Or… two, maybe.” She shifted, wincing. “Probably two, by the way they’re bouncing on my fucking bladder. Honey, what’s wrong?”

Kidd had sunk down to the ground next to her and buried his face in her cloak. She scoffed and combed her fingers through his tangled hair.

“Missed you,” he mumbled.

“Aw, babe.”

 _“Hate_ you.”

“Right.” She sounded amused.

“Why can’t you take me with you when you go to sea?”

“I can’t take a 13-year old boy on the fucking sea with me. It’s rough out there, Kidd.”

“I’m 14 now.” _And it can’t be worse than here._

“Holy, already? Well. Look, there’s a lot of things you won’t understand 'til you’re older.”

His temper flared and he snarled, “I understand plenty. I understand you leaving me here to rot while you go get fucked by sailors and chase fake treasure.”

“Kidd.” She tried to rub his head soothingly and he ducked out of her reach.

“You’ll take off and let all the fucking _vultures_ in this shit place hound me. All these fuckers wanna carve a piece outta me and YOU, you want nothing to do with me—”

“Kidd! Don’t be an idiot. Of course I—”

The little jar of oil was still sitting, tipped over, on the table where Kizaru had left it. He grabbed it and hurled it into the fireplace with a wordless howl. It hit the stone and shattered, and the splatter of oil sent up a rolling cloud of flame that singed their faces but didn’t burst out of the fireplace.

Bellemere was out of the chair and twisting his arm into a tight hold within a split second, quick and deadly despite her massive belly. She pressed his arm steadily down as she scolded him, and he sank to his knees, still snarling.

“You’re being a little _shit!_ The fuck is wrong with you, huh? Want me to kick your ass?”

“I’ll fuckin KILL you!” he raged.

“Like hell you w— _ah,_ ah fuck—” Bellemere let out a sudden grunt of pain, apparently at nothing, and let him go. She tipped sideways before catching herself and blundering awkwardly to the floor next to him.

Kidd stared at her, stunned into calm. “What the fuck??”

She scowled. “Ugh… This little fucker kicks. Sometimes it gets me right in the spine.”

“A baby took you down?”

“Shut up.”

They sat there on the floor, breathing hard and avoiding each other's eyes.

She sighed. “Well… you gonna get your poor mountain of a mother off the cold floor or what?”

"Hah… …" Kidd crawled over to her and curled against her side instead. 

She let out a bewildered scoff. “The hell?"

"I dunno."

"This is too weird. First you bust in here with a knife, then you wanna cuddle. Then you try to burn the house down, and now you wanna hug it out. What the fuck happened while I was gone?”

“Nothing.” He really was an idiot. Fuck. Bellemere couldn’t have done shit about any of it, any more than he could, or Genzo, or… or anyone. Just the way it was. “Nothing happened.”

* * *

[ ](https://sorellaerba.tumblr.com/post/615884977526226944/chokefriends-selkie-skin-series-has-returned)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art by sorellaerba ♡


	3. Signs of life

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: assault (attempted), violence

Bellemere went into labor on a clear, sunny afternoon a few weeks after her return. Kidd wouldn't have even known it was happening except that Belle's usual swearing was getting more colorful and regular. Every little while he could hear a burst of obscenities and banging from inside the house, as she stopped what she was doing to kick the table in pain.

"God DAMN this… shitsucking _cunt_ child— _urgh._ Urrgh!"

He chopped wood and ignored her til she called him. 

"Okay… _urgh…_ fuck. Kidd! I guess this birth shit is happening. These pains ain't passing. We better get on with it."

"Okay, go ahead." Kidd kept chopping wood.

A slipper came flying out of the window and nailed him squarely in the head. "I said let's MOVE. Go get your aunt Muriel! And tons of water and whatever, come _on!"_

Grumbling to himself, Kidd put aside the axe and went trudging down the hill, dodging the second slipper sent to hurry him up.

* * *

Muriel came to attend Belle for the birth—a rare moment of truce in the two women's longstanding conflict. She even brought gifts for the baby: little sacklike shirts, caps, and a flurry of other things she'd been making since learning of Belle's pregnancy. The old woman seemed strangely invested in this unborn child, in stark contrast to how she'd always treated Kidd and Belle. Maybe she'd finally given up on the idea of having her own children. 

Genzo brought extra blankets and food before returning to work in the smithy. Kidd was instructed to stay with the women, out of the way but within shouting distance.

"I don't see what I need to stick around for," Kidd sulked. He was sitting against the stone wall outside, drawing circles in the dirt with the big fire poker he'd made for himself.

"Don't need to understand. Just need to do as you're told." Genzo took the poker away from him with a deft swipe, and shoved a cloth package at him instead. "Eat this for your supper. Can't go wandering in and out for things while they're busy."

"They're not gonna be done by then?"

"Took a whole day to squeeze _your_ fat head out when you was born. Nearly killed your mother, too. Didn't know that, did ya," Genzo shook his head at Kidd's look of shock. "It's a confounded set of circumstances, child-birthing. If the baby comes out wrong or has something fucked up with it, it's likely to take the mother too."

"Jesus. Why the hell would anyone wanna have one if it'll kill em…" Kidd scowled at the little package.

He got a stern clip on the ear from his surly uncle. "You just concern yourself with staying alert. You got that? You fetch whatever's needed, and you run and get the birthing woman if Muriel says so. If things do go bad, I mean."

"Why don't we just get the birthing lady now?"

"Ain't got coin for 'ifs.'"

Kidd thought about this. "So… so what if Belle—"

"That's enough ifs! You just better keep an ear out and be ready," Genzi growled.

Kidd shifted up straighter against the wall, a cold knot of fear starting to grow in his stomach. "...gimme the poker back."

"The hell you need it for?" Genzo held it away suspiciously. "And why you got one so big and heavy anyhow. This what you been wasting working hours doing?"

"No. Just give it."

"I oughta rework it for something useful."

"I just wanna have something, okay?" Kidd insisted.

Genzo sighed and gave it up, for once. "Ain't like a heavy stick will be any help with this business," he grumbled. He shouldered his empty sack and set off down the road toward the smithy.

Muriel called out the door not long after. Her high, piercing voice crawled over the stone wall and dug into Kidd's ears. 

"Kidd! Boy!"

"What?" Kidd scrambled up, "Is it Belle??"

"Ah. Just making sure you hadn't wandered off already."

"..." Kidd scoffed to himself and sank back down below the wall. God, that woman's voice could call the dead from their rest.

Muriel's pinched face appeared over the wall to peer at him critically. "What's the poker for. You don't need to be running around with that."

Kidd pointed it at her. "To skewer the baby if it hurts Belle."

"..." Muriel crossed herself and retreated.

"Or you, if you fuck it up!" Kidd called, returning to drawing his restless patterns.

* * *

Kidd hung out by the stone wall outside for the first while, listening anxiously while his mother cycled in and out of her labor pains. He could track its worsening by the severity of her swearing and Muriel's fussing. It went on and on and on, for way, way longer than Kidd had expected. Hours and hours... He thought it’d gotten as bad as it could get at nightfall, but he was wrong. 

The first time he heard Belle scream, he burst into the house to see what was wrong. 

"What's wrong??" He squinted around in the dim lamp light.

"Nothing's wrong, this is just how labor goes! I told you to wait til you're called," Muriel scolded. She was hunched over Belle, who was half sitting up in bed. Kidd couldn't quite see what was happening. 

"Out!" Muriel insisted.

He hesitated. "Uh…"

"It's… fine… Kidd." Belle huffed after a moment. "Get the _fuck_ back outside."

"But should I get the birthing lady—?"

"OUT!"

* * *

The second time, he just opened the door a little, but closed it again in a hurry when Muriel threw a slipper at him. It thudded off the wood and he felt like an idiot. He went back to sit on the wall.

* * *

The screaming reached a new pitch around midnight, and Kidd gave up and moved down the hill a little ways. Still within shouting distance, but away from the epicenter of all that pain. The wind had been picking up all night and now it was strong enough to whip away most of the noise. There were heavy clouds, no stars or moon. Just darkness and the windy gale. Kidd chose a sheltered, somewhat hidden spot just at the edge of the blackwood, and built a small fire to keep himself busy. Time dragged its tortuous way into the wee hours.

Lying there on his stomach, idly stirring the coals with his fire poker and trying to imagine that the wailing was just the wind, he suddenly thought to wonder how far screaming would carry down the hill. Probably could be heard at least as far as the easternmost houses in the village, especially on a clear night like the one last autumn… He shivered and clamped down on the sudden impulse to run back to the house. He’d been so fucking skittish since then, jumping at every small thing, especially in the dark. Made him feel like _such_ a fucking weakling. 

The feeling spiked as the screaming and gusting reached a solid, combined shriek. He stubbornly kept himself still. 

Until a strong hand caught the back of his shirt and pinned him to the ground. 

“Boy. _Steady.”_

Kidd knew that voice. His entire body turned to ice.

“Hmhmhm. Thought there might be something going on up here. Screaming all evening long, says the talk. Not yours, turns out. Here I'd come up to check on ya.”

“Get off me!!”

“What, you want me to interrupt your mother? In her state? Nah, I ain't that kinda man.”

Kidd threw dirt and scrambled away when the arm loosened its grip, but Kizaru caught him easily. He found himself on his back, that hated face inches from his.

“This’ll be an easy one, boy. Promise.”

“YOU SICK, PIGFUCKING DOGFACE CUNT—unghhh—” A fist in the gut and Kidd curled up, coughing.

“You settled down now? You're embarrassing yourself. Listen: just suck me off and I'll leave it at that. Easy.”

Kidd kept kicking and clawing while the larger man tried to hold him in place. He must have done some damage because there was a snarl and a couple of hard blows that felt like sledgehammers. He kept up his frantic defense, mind not even registering anymore what was happening, until the smell of burning meat stung his nose. 

There was a hand fisted in his hair, and something that felt like a blade searing right through his shoulder. He struggled and screamed, until the cherry-red tip of the fire poker was thrust threateningly in front of his eye. 

"I said SETTLE."

Kidd stilled instantly, pupils narrowing to pinpricks and the world receding into nothing—

"KIDD!!"

And then something else pierced the haze. Somebody's screams, but not Belle's, and not his own. All movement stopped.

“KIDD! _KIIIDD,”_ Muriel was calling frantically from the top of the hill, just out of sight. "Where are you!!"

 _"Shit,"_ Kizaru spat, scrambling up.

"Shit…" Kidd raised his head and looked around. The fire was guttering in the falling wind and he was alone in the dark once more. Between gusts he could hear a baby’s wailing.

Muriel's screeching rang overtop. “KIDD GET UP HERE!”

“Shut up…” Kidd mumbled at her. 

He stood, cradling his arm. There were scrapes and tender spots all over but everything seemed intact. He was fine. He climbed the hill to the house in a daze, and only just remembered to run a hand over his face before stepping into the light of the open door. It was clear. Everything was fine.

As soon as he was at the threshold, a squalling bundle was pushed into his arms. 

“Take her! Hold her head. Just walk her around and get her quiet, the second one’s in trouble, the cord, just walk,” Muriel rambled.

Kidd could hear labored breathing from inside. He craned his neck to look past his frantic aunt.

“Is Belle…?”

“Everything’s fine!” Muriel pushed him back outside and closed the door.

He blinked in confusion and looked down at the thing in his arms. The bundle was some kind of nightmare creature. It didn't even look human, let alone like a baby—all knobbly, blood-crusted and wrinkled like a gremlin, with a little wisp of red hair plastered to its skull. It was screaming itself hoarse. 

Kidd held it stiffly and turned to go walk around somewhere, as instructed… But as he turned he was suddenly confronted by the wall of darkness around them—an inky unknown waiting just beyond the little circle of light spilling from the window. Kizaru could still be out there. Anything could be out there. 

Kidd sat against the house instead, tucking in his feet to stay inside the light, and tried to keep his breathing even. 

“Everything's fine,” he tried telling the little bundle.

It kept screaming.

“Please just fucking shut up.” He hunched over it. “Someone's gonna hear.”

* * *

Kidd stayed sitting against the wall for endless moments, clutching the baby and trying to see past the wall of darkness that surrounded them. His mind ran through every possible fucked up thing that could be waiting out there. Underneath his panicked vigilance, he kinda knew that Kizaru wouldn't try anything more with so many witnesses nearby, especially if babies were present. It'd look bad for him at council. So in a weird way he’d never admit to himself, it was actually the tiny bundle that was his guard against the dark.

He must have zoned out again, lost in the dead calm of anticipated violence, but he jerked awake when the screaming doubled. He looked down. The baby was still in the throes of a raging fit, and from inside the house, a second little voice was starting up an answering noise.

Kidd couldn't stand it anymore. He rose and pushed the door open. 

Belle was sitting up in bed, crying and smiling. Muriel was lying on the floor, laughing. There was a second screaming gremlin in Belle's arms, this one a worrying shade of blue. None of this seemed right.

He went over and passed the little red bundle to Belle as well. “Is it over?”

“Better be,” she chuckled in a thin voice, taking the baby in her other arm. “If any more pop out we'll just have to stick em back in cuz I ain't got three arms. Or three tits.”

Kidd fell into the pile of blankets next to her, but realized as soon as he'd landed that they were soaked in blood and whatnot. “Fuck.”

Muriel was up and back to her bustling around, setting a kettle to boil and folding things. “Up! Boy, get up and stay outside for now. Your mother needs her rest and you're going to get the babies sick and…”

Kidd grunted and kicked the soiled blankets off the bed, staying put.

“Boy.”

“Muriel,” Belle interrupted, “I'm gonna need him here. You gotta rest too.”

“At least make him sleep in the other room,” she sniffed.

Belle insisted, “You sleep in the other room. You wrestled two little demons outta one gaping hellmouth, single-handed—you need a fuckin angel suite.”

Muriel chuckled, pleased at the flattery, and let Belle's crudeness pass for once. “Oh, well. I'll just bathe em little terrors, and get you a cloth, and get wash water going for the blankets and…”

“Kidd’ll do the blankets tomorrow,” Belle nudged him.

“Yeah whatever,” Kidd agreed into the mattress dully.

“The boy’s not—”

“I fuckin know how to get blood out of stuff, okay? It's fine.” He turned over so he couldn't see Muriel, but could still see Belle and the babies. 

The old woman tutted but gave in. She still insisted on bathing the babies before sleeping, though. Belle gave her one at a time to bathe, while the other nursed. They were still crying and crying and crying, though. 

Kidd shivered.

Belle seemed to pick up on how much the noise was getting to him. She brushed damp red strands from his clammy forehead, and he looked up at her without moving.

She frowned. “Everything’s okay now, hun. Why you looking like that?”

“I thought you were dying…”

“Aw honey, no, it all went good, far as shitting out twins ever goes. That's just how this stuff is.”

He chewed his lip. “What are they screaming about so much? They won't _stop.”_

She actually smiled at this, like it made her happy or something. “They’re just hungry. And mad that they got pulled out of a nice warm bed by us monsters. Don't let it shake you, it's good screaming.”

He scoffed. “No such thing.”

“Sure there is, lovebear. Better than no noise at all, right? Means they're alive.” 

She stroked the dark hair of the second one, still fussing at her breast but calming. Its skin was less blue and more of a healthy color now. It seemed peaceful enough. But the red-topped one was bawling its damn head off in a way that sounded anything but good. It kicked and flailed desperate little stick arms, splashing water on Muriel, and the women chuckled. 

Kidd imagined how fucking cold and scared it must be… He shuffled up closer to Belle.

“Honey… what's that on your neck? What’d you do?”

Kidd twitched and covered the deep burn mark just under his collar bone. He'd completely forgotten about it, but now that she'd pointed it out, he was suddenly aware of how much it fucking hurt. God, he was such a fucking mess. At least he could wash the blood and dirt from his own clothes along with the blankets tomorrow and avoid rousing suspicion. He swallowed. 

“Messing around with the fire poker,” he managed with only a little crack in his voice. “Shit happens. It's fine.”

“Oh my god, Kiddo. And you tore your tunic again. Can you let me see it?”

He shook his head. 

_“Kidd.”_

“Tomorrow.”

She sighed but didn't press him this time. 

Muriel finished the first bath and traded babies with Belle. The dark-haired baby was less loud about its bath, but clearly still unhappy. The red-haired one found its meal and finally, finally fell quiet. 

Kidd had almost fallen asleep when Belle nudged him and told him to make room. He blearily shuffled to the foot of the bed as a red-haired bundle, and then a dark-haired bundle were set next to him. Belle lay down on the far side of the bed so the babies were between her and Kidd. They looked more like actual babies now—less wrinkled and slime-crusted, but still skinnier than he thought they should be. They were tightly swaddled in blanket strips and wearing ridiculous little headbands. They were finally quiet.

“What’s their names gonna be?” he wondered aloud.

“Oh, uh.” Belle clearly hadn't even thought about it. She was strange about things like that. She’d just call them 'the babies’ and various weird nicknames their whole lives if they let her.

Muriel crossed herself. “Don’t speak the names aloud!” she scolded in a harsh whisper. “Not yet. Ol’ Nick will hear and come take em away!”

Kidd snorted. Crazy old biddy. The devil had already come and gone.

“Right… And I suppose we gotta wait til your priest wants a fuck bad enough to come up here and christen them?” Belle sighed.

Muriel's face made its usual sour pucker shape, and Belle, for once, didn't provoke her further. The old woman said her goodnights, gave the babies a little kiss each, and disappeared into the next room. 

“You think of some names,” Belle murmured to Kidd, before dropping straight into an exhausted sleep. 

Kidd was left in the dark and the quiet with his nerves still ringing. He just wanted to fucking sleep… No one was screaming anymore, nothing bad was happening, everything was okay. He should sleep. 

He lay on his side first but he could almost feel the darkness looming behind him, like something waiting to grab him. He turned onto his back but that was just as bad. He turned onto his stomach, face level with the bundle nearest him—the red one. It was sleeping peacefully, like it hadn't been wailing in terror and covered in blood minutes before. Hell of a way to start life, holy fuck.

"I dunno what to tell ya,” he whispered to it, only half joking, “Being alive doesn't really get any better.”

Obviously it couldn't understand, but it was kinda easier to talk to that way. He chewed his lip and concentrated on its strange little face and soft little breaths. 

“Shit happens sometimes. Or doesn't. And there's nothing you can do about it either way."

Soft breath.

“Shit like… like getting beat, and f-fucked and burned, a-and…” Kidd scrunched his eyes closed to hold in the sudden welling up of pain in his chest _._

But his audience slept on, absorbing all this with complete calm. 

“Won't happen to you, though. You won't be an idiot...”

Breathing.

“You won't let it.”

Breathing and silence.

After a hundred breaths like that, Kidd opened his eyes again. The pain hadn't lessened at all, but he did feel calmer. And he'd thought of a name for her—a secret name, one that no one else would ever know. 

He didn't whisper it, even to her, just in case someone overheard and came to take her away.


	4. Wave and stone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: violence, off-screen assault, self harm

The babies woke now and then during the night, and Belle pulled one or the other over to nurse. As dawn started creeping through the window, Kidd gave up on sleeping and rolled out of bed. He hadn't really gotten much sleep, but he wasn't feeling as panicked and weak anymore. He felt weirdly calm.

“Up with the sun, that great Cap’n Kidd,” Belle teased him, her eyes still closed.

Kidd grunted and stuffed a biscuit into his mouth before taking the soiled blanket pile outside. He put them all into a large washbasin behind the house, and hauled water until they were covered. It quickly turned red as they soaked. He emptied and refilled it and the water became deep red again. Watching it reminded him of something… 

“Boy, you’re making a racket! What’re you doing!" Muriel called out the window.

Kidd didn’t turn, still staring at the red water. “Just wondering how much someone can bleed before they die.”

"..." That shut her up. Muriel crossed herself and banged the shutter closed.

“More than usual if they’re bleeding for three,” Belle called from bed, and then chuckled at her own joke.

Kidd dumped the water out and just took the blankets down to the stream instead. One at a time, he scrubbed and wrung, scrubbed and wrung in the frigid water. He watched as long tongues of red licked downstream and faded into the swirling eddies. It took a few hours. The sun was well above the mountain by the time he'd finished. He spread the blankets on the grass and stripped off to do his own clothes. Not that much blood after all… he watched one pale streak flutter down the stream and vanish, and that was it. He washed himself, counting his injuries blankly, then put his damp trousers back on while he started cleaning Belle’s birthing clothes. Now those were a fucking mess.

“Aw, gross, you murder somebody?”

Kidd froze and cast a wary glance in the direction of the newcomer. It was that fucking Bege kid, mean and tubby, one of a pack of useless boys who hung around the village and liked to use Kidd as an excuse to start fights. Kidd chanced a scanning glance around them. Where was the rest of the pack?

Bege stood on the far bank of the stream and kept up his obnoxious shit.

“Was it your mom? You do her in?”

Kidd left the garment soaking in the stream and stood slowly. He looked all around again. Huh.

“Haha, my brother says she was screaming up there all last night. Could hear it from the other side of the blackwood. Thought maybe some guys were taking their money's worth outta her the hard way, hahaha!"

Kidd skirted in a wide circle around Bege, still not acknowledging him. He kept looking until… yes, there: Way down the path, he saw three other members of the ‘pack.’ They were sneaking away down the hill, leaving Bege alone with Kidd.

“But I guess it was you after all, huh—”

“Are you fucking serious?” Kidd interrupted, coming up to confront his heckler.

“You heard me, whoreson,” Bege grinned smugly.

“No, I mean, did you _seriously_ come up here alone?”

“Uh…” 

“Without even a weapon or anything. Just you.”

Bege tried not to look back over his shoulder to check that his buddies were still there. He smiled at Kidd with forced confidence. “Sure, haha. You don't scare me. You know what I hear?”

"Booger, I don't fucking _care—"_ He struck suddenly.

_"Unh!"_

Kidd's first testing jab fell a little wide of the puglike nose, but still made that solid, fucking satisfying 'snap' sound Kidd loved. He shook the sting out of his shoulder and lined up his shot again. Yeah, it was a little raw, but it still worked. As he let the pain in his body register again, a flood of other stuff came bubbling up too, dark and urgent. He started shaking a little.

Bege wiped his cheek and sneered, squaring up opposite him. “I hear you been choking on cock for coin too. That true?"

"You little FUCK..."

The second strike hit home for real. Bege stumbled back and spat blood but kept up his bullshit. "P-thhp. Hah. I know it is, cuz my brother sees guys going up there all the time, even when your mom’s not around.”

"SHUT UP!"

Kidd kept jabbing at his face, harder and harder, but Bege kept blabbing along, louder and louder, unaware that his audience was long gone. Kidd couldn't _fucking_ shut him up no matter how hard he hit him, and he was getting more and more frantic. Soon, he'd backed Bege into the stream and tackled him to the ground. He ignored the rock that Bege was using to hammer at his head and arms, and focused on just fucking DROWNING the little shit.

Bege thrashed and pummeled Kidd with the rock. When this didn't work, his resolve finally broke down and he tried calling for his backup.

“Barto! Hkkhff! CAVENDI—pllfff!”

“I think you got left behind, booger. Just you and me.” 

Kidd was actually having trouble keeping Bege’s head underwater. His arm was tiring, blood was getting in his eyes, and the rest of him was aching. He grit his teeth and pushed the thrashing boy underwater again.

“Pffwwah—okay stop! _Stop!_ Get off me!!”

“Hah!”

“Help! HELLLPP!!” 

Kidd gave up holding his head under and just dealt blow after blow, smashing his fist into the sodden mass. “Who the fuck is gonna hear you, booger?”

“SOMEONE HELP!!”

“Who the fuck is gonna care...”

Kidd didn't notice the answering voices or approaching steps. He was grabbed and thrown to the side mid-strike, and he fumbled around in the water while Bege was pulled out of the stream.

A hand grabbed his arm. He snarled, shoving at whoever it was.

Muriel stumbled back and fell into the stream. She sat there, fuming. “Can't even to do the washing without starting a fight!”

Kidd blinked and looked around. 

Bege’s father and adult brother were there, mopping up and berating the pulpy-looking boy. Hanging back and watching were Bartolomeo, Cavendish, and Bege's younger brother. Shit… they'd probably gone to get the adults while Kidd took the bait.

Kidd balled his fists and yelled at his aunt, “I didn't start it, I was just here and that little PRICK came up here talking SHIT about Belle!”

“And you couldn't just ignore him? Sticks and stones, child!”

“I DIDN’T HAVE A FUCKING STICK OR I’DA TAKEN IT AND FUCKING—”

* * *

Kidd sat against the wall in the empty council house and fumed to himself. It should have been fucking obvious to any idiot that he hadn't gone looking for a fight with an armload of bloody blankets and damp clothes. Bege and Barto and them should be the ones in trouble. But _apparently_ Kidd’s promise to 'take a stick and beat Bege back into his mother's cunt' counted as a threat against the old dame. And that was just the kind of shit that council loooved. In a minute, Kidd was sure, Boa would come in and give him another lecture about honoring mothers, before having his tongue nailed to the fucking bell post again. Fine by him. He hoped they at least gave him his shirt back first.

The door opened and he ignored it. Until Kizaru sauntered in, locking the door behind him.

Kidd shot up. He stayed flattened against the wall, heart pounding in his throat.

They looked at each other for a moment. Kizaru took a slow step toward him. Kidd backed away down the wall. Kizaru took another couple steps and then stood smiling as Kidd backed away and away into a corner.

“Our wise chief councilwoman has agreed to leave this situation to me.”

“Fuck…”

“Lucky for you, the family admits it wasn't an unprovoked attack. And you were so upset by your mother’s drawn-out labor, as anyone would be. I understand. Madam Boa understands. She agrees the punishment should be _easy.”_

Kidd edged around the room, as though there were any way out other than the door Kizaru was blocking.

“You know, a young man in your lowly position… You can't afford to be always acting up like this.”

“Leave me alone,” Kidd mumbled, looking down. He left off his pacing and stood with his back against the wall furthest from Kizaru. He saw Kizaru approaching out of the corner of his eye and tried to shrink away.

His tunic and shoes were held out to him. He glanced up but didn’t move to take them.

“Dress. You're looking pathetic.”

Kidd did as he was told, trying to keep Kizaru in his peripheral vision. The tall man didn't make any move, though—just watched. Kidd finished and stood silently for once.

“So here's the easy way. You’re gonna suck me off, right now.”

“No! _No…”_

“No? Because the hard way is this: I fuck you until you can't stand, and then you suck me off. And I can tell you, boy, that no amount of noise will summon any intervention now."

Kidd felt bile rising in his throat. He was being backed into the corner, step by step.

“So what’ll it be.”

“E-easy way.”

“Smart boy.”

* * *

Kizaru escorted him back to the smithy after.

Genzo just grunted in reply to the councilman's admonition about letting Kidd run wild, and didn't look up from his work until the other man had left again.

“Kidd.”

Kidd just stood there in a daze.

“That _his_ doing, there?” Genzo indicated the burn from the fire poker.

“...Is Muriel here?” Kidd wondered.

“No, she's with your mother for now.”

“Okay… good…”

“You can't fuckin keep outta trouble while your mother needs you, boy?”

“I. I tried.”

Genzo heaved a sigh and looked him over. “You got anything that needs sewing up or whatnot?”

“No.”

“Okay, well. Go in the house for now. Need you back working on these orders soon as you're rested. Been piling up here.”

Kidd just stood there, biting his nails. Finally the old man scoffed and waved him over to the corner opposite the forge—Kidd’s usual sleeping spot whenever he'd been kicked out of the house. Now it seemed like a haven. Kidd pulled his blankets onto the floor and lay listening to the sound of metal striking metal—steady and clear as a bell. Gradually, he fell asleep.

* * *

It was dark when Kidd woke up. The hammering had stopped, and for a panicked moment he thought Genzo had left.

But there was the old blacksmith, sitting and smoking his pipe with his feet up.

“I'm on my way in,” was all he said when he saw Kidd awake.

Kidd nodded gratefully and followed him inside.

* * *

Kidd knew he couldn't just follow the old man around forever. Muriel came back after a couple days, and Kidd had to leave again or risk putting her pinched face through a window. 

He stayed with his mother and helped her as much as he could, but the babies’ crying still got to him and he couldn't sleep anywhere near that house for a long while. And things between him and Belle were getting tense. He tried to stick around at least for the evenings, when customers would visit, and he'd take the girls outside to lie in the summer grass. That was good—just watching them wave their little fists around and coo at insects. No one came to bother him when he had them, and he liked how they perked up when they saw him. When one of them got fussy (almost always Nami), he’d just tie her in a bundle and strap her to his back while he chopped wood or carried water.

But at night he'd stay sitting up, keeping a small fire going in the hearth and honing the edge of his knives over and over. He'd started making them at the smithy and hiding them around the house and along his usual routes. They got to such a fine edge they could open flesh like butter. Didn't even hurt.

* * *

As the summer progressed he found he couldn't avoid Kizaru anymore. Every time Kidd got hauled in for something, the councilman would take charge of his case and extract service from him. Kidd thought at first that the other council members would find out and save him from this. But gradually it occurred to him that they must already know. Or at least, they found it convenient to turn a blind eye to whatever was going on, since Kizaru had found the only punishment that actually worked on the problem Kidd had become.

The other thing Kidd got very good at was deterring the vultures drawn by rumor. Most he could avoid or shame into leaving him alone. Some men he could practice his rapidly-developing smithy arm on—the ones he was sure had no power to really retaliate. He broke their heads, took their purses, and could usually count on them being too embarrassed to get a crew together for revenge. A couple were too persistent and influential to safely refuse. These he gave in to, hating himself but remembering that the alternative was a trip to the council house. And whatever, they had cash and yeah, times were hard with two new mouths to feed so, yeah…

That's just how it was now.

* * *

He spent more and more time at the cliffs and the sea, wandering the beaches and making safe little hideaways in various caves. 

It was only in the caves, listening to the waves hammering the shore with ringing force all night, that he could sleep deeply enough to actually dream. In his dreams he was always flying away over the sea, or flying away under it.

Another winter passed, and all this started to seem crushingly routine.

* * *

In the spring, the girls got sick. Muriel insisted that the priest be summoned to christen them in case they died unbaptized. He came in the midst of a storm, grumbling about unholy signs and ungodly bastards. Genzo and Muriel attended to witness.

“Okay, Kiddo, what’d you come up with,” Belle called once they were all present. 

Kidd was standing apart, hovering at the door in silent protest at Muriel's presence. He had actually come up with names, though he still kept the secret name for the red-haired one to himself.

“The loud one’s the wave and the calm one’s the shore,” he told them. Nami and Nojiko.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay we have kidlaw content coming up, not next chapter but the one after. So after that we'll be done the backstory segment and onto post-selkie-skin stuff! Thanks for sticking with Kidds extended trials, here ♡


	5. Mythical creatures

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: minor violence, coercive / noncon oral sex

Some days, the sea was generous. Kidd had already found a few little prizes today in the debris along the rocky beach, so the dead Royal Navy sailor was just a lucky bonus. He gave the uniformed body a couple pokes with a stick to make sure it was dead. Its skin was rubbery and swollen like something dead, but Bege's dad looked like that on a good day, so you never knew. Next he checked for signs of disease—one of many reasons someone might get thrown overboard—and finding none, he decided it was safe. 

He patted it down and checked its fingers and pockets for shiny things. Nothing. Just some random sailor, probably caught cheating at cards or whatever. So, no valuables, but that was fine—he had other stuff of interest to Kidd. The scruffy scavenger took out his new knife and cut away the sodden shirt, revealing a rich spread of amateur tattoos. The usual mix of hearts, daggers, crosses and cooch… boring. Oh, but there was something interesting: a mermaid with four arms and a serpent tail. And on the sailor's back: a harpy. With wings and talons and everything. And a huge rack for some reason, but whatever. Sailors seemed to have a lot of these magical beings tattooed on them. They probably got to see a lot of stuff like that, sailing all over. Belle used to talk about shifters especially—people with human forms and animal 'Skins' that they wrapped around themselves to transform. Capturing a shifter's Skin bound them to your bidding, until they found wherever you'd hidden it. That's what he'd heard, anyway.

Kidd examined the fantastic creatures for a while before getting bored and continuing along the beach. He found a few fragments of broken crates further down, which he turned over piece by piece until he found one with an interesting word stamped on the back: Trafalgar. He brought it with him. He liked to imagine that the words on these washed-up crates were the names of faraway places. ‘Trafalgar’ sounded like a lost island populated by harpies and mermaids, for sure.

Around the next bend, Kidd found a companion corpse to the drowned man. This one gave him a sick feeling. Maybe he'd leave it alone… ah, but it looked like it might have some coins on it. He went to pat it down. This one was a woman's body, her frilly underdress too tight around her swollen flesh. It'd probably been too tight to begin with, though. Bloodless breasts bulged from the top of the dress, puffy with hidden decay. Kidd steeled himself and pushed his hand between them, until he found the little pouch he'd known would be there. A lonely copper was inside. 

He stood. There was probably more money sewn inside the corset (that's where Belle hid her earnings, anyway), but he'd have to undress it to check, and he'd had enough.

He went to deposit his other spoils in the nearest cave (a glass bottle, a silk scarf and a dried-up shark's purse). Then he scrubbed the death off his hands as well as he could and headed up the cliff toward the smithy.

* * *

Today his walk was interrupted by a girl. He groaned inwardly as soon as he saw her prancing up. She was one of Boa's brood (the chief councilwoman of the village), and so was dangerous by association. It was the weird one of the Boa bunch too—a gawky thing a year or so younger than Kidd, with all these newly-sprouted feminine bulges that looked like bumps on a twig. That's what Kidd thought, anyway. The girl herself seemed very proud of them.

“Kidd, wanna see someth—?”

“Nope.” He tried walking around her.

She latched onto his arm, pushing out her bulges, and giggled, “I’ll show you something if you show me something.”

“Don't you got any brothers you can play bad-touch with?” he grumbled.

“Haha, no? And anyway, I don't know anyone else who got what _you_ got.”

“If you think I'm the only one in the village with a dick, I got great news—”

“Show me your side,” she interrupted, tugging them to a stop and grinning.

He considered either scaring her off or just walking away… but weirdly enough, this was one of those cases with no safe way out. He sighed through his teeth and scanned the road. Clear.

“Gimme a copper and I'll show you,” he offered.

“Um, no? You show me yours and… and I'll let you _touch_ mine,” she countered breathlessly.

“Uh, _no,_ you—hey.”

She'd seized his hand and stuffed it into her bodice. Kidd stood and waited, hand limp. Not as bad as groping the dead girl's, he supposed. It took a moment for uncertainty, then petulance to creep into her expression at his disinterest. She let his hand drop and pulled the fabric of her top back up.

“Done?” he grumbled.

“Hmph. No. Let me see them.”

“Copper.”

She glared at him, but then shrugged. She pulled a copper from a little fabric pouch and pressed it into his hand.

Kidd pulled his shirt up so she could see the deep gashes across his ribs, and stood waiting with as much bored irritation as he could convey. Most were already scarred over but there were a couple fresh ones, and of course she got her weird fingers all over those.

“Why just the left side?” she wondered, poking the scab of one.

“Easier angle. I'm right handed.” He pulled the shirt back down. “Bye.”

The gawky girl sighed, “I should've just threatened to sic Mama Boa on you and saved myself a copper.”

“Probably,” he muttered.

* * *

“I fuckin _hate_ this village,” Kidd complained loudly, stomping into the smithy.

“Ox shoes,” Genzo barked, already at work.

“I fuckin hate ox shoes…” he complained more quietly.

He'd gotten through exactly one shoe when his aunt's shrill voice drilled its way into his skull. Not directed at him, though. 

“Git! Devil-worshipping rabble! No, I don't want any, just go!”

He chanced a look out the door. The strangest woman he’d ever seen was standing by the gate, brandishing bundles of baskets at Muriel. She was dressed more or less like a villager, but with little leather slippers on her feet, heaps of bead strings at her neck, and a blanket worn around her shoulders even though it was summer. Her complexion was dark and she had one of those faces that it was impossible to put an age to.

Muriel tried to shoo her away. “Do you even speak English? I said NO THANK YOU.”

“Pah.” The strange woman gave up and went on her way.

“What the hell?” Kidd wondered.

“Just vagrant trash! Peddling witchcraft and trinkets,” Muriel muttered darkly, as though she didn't know which was worse. She retreated back into the house.

Kidd glanced back. Genzo was absorbed in his work, immune to Muriel's nagging voice. Kidd slipped out of his apron and took off after the strange woman.

* * *

Kidd followed her until she paused for a rest, at the stone wall just before the blackwood. He walked up and stood watching her as she drank from a skin.

She chuckled and took her time, not seeming worried about him. The bundles she'd been carrying were lying to one side—dozens of little baskets all tied together in bunches.

“You're a witch,” he ventured after some moments. 

“Heheheh…” she drank again.

“You speak English?”

“Spose I do.”

“What's in the baskets?”

“Ah,” she mused. “Some of em, just plain ol baskets, pretty nice. Some of em… potions. Heheheh.”

“What do they do?” Kidd stayed back but strained to see the baskets more closely.

“What you want em to do?”

“Uh...” Now Kidd couldn't even think of what to ask for. He cleared his throat and looked around. 

“Hmm?” The basket woman raised her eyebrows.

“Well I… I _want_ the whole fucking village to disappear and leave me the fuck alone,” he exhaled in a rush, and then felt embarrassed.

She tapped a finger thoughtfully on her chin. “Hmmm… nah.”

“‘Nah?’”

“Can't do that.”

“How about if you make me stronger and bigger than any of em, so I can fuckin do it myself,” he tried.

“Nah.”

Kidd laughed. This was so fucking absurd. “Can you make it so I can fucking sleep, at least?” he tried, rubbing his temple.

“Ah!” she perked up. “Yes.”

“You can? What's the price?”

“Seven copper.”

“What??” 

Definitely a fucking joke… everyone knew that witches dealt in blood and firstborns and whatever.

“Seven copper, and I give you enough for seven nights of sleep. Or a few days of nice feeling, hehehhh.”

Kidd felt in his pouch and brought out his two copper pieces. 

“Well. What'll this get me,” he crouched down and dropped them into her hand.

“Hm. For this? I turn you into a little red robin and you can fly way, way away.”

He examined her with tired bemusement. “That's all I want.”

“Okay then. Wait here until morning then turn around three times and say tweet tweet.” She got up, gathered her baskets, and nodded to him before wandering off up the road again, heading out of the village.

Kidd laughed and plunked down against the stone wall where she'd been sitting. “Heh. Hahaha…”

He closed his eyes and let his thoughts run for a while, then got up and headed up the hill too, toward his mother's house.

* * *

Kidd was unsurprised to find the old basket woman already there, sitting in a chair next to Belle and smoking a little clay pipe.

“Fake witch,” he commented to his mother, taking the third chair with a sigh and resting his head on the table.

Belle scoffed. “What, Shakky? A witch?”

Shakky chuckled and smoked.

“She said she had potions,” Kidd muttered, glaring over his folded arms. And, well… she'd looked all spooky.

Belle clicked her tongue at Shakky. “You been ripping off my airhead son?”

“Sold him a good joke.”

“Give him the fucking money back, woman.”

Shakky shook her head and chuckled.

“Whatever,” Kidd waved it away. “Got the money from some shady women anyway.”

“What shady women?” Belle gave him a suspicious look and he shrugged. “You been getting up some skirts?”

“No.”

“Bullshit. Shakky, he's gone half the time and won't tell me where. What does that tell you.”

“Little friend,” Shakky mused.

“Uh huh.” Belle raised her eyebrows at him. “Who’s the girlfriend, Kiddo?”

“Don't have one.”

“Well, why not!”

Kidd just snorted.

Shakky tapped out her spent tobacco into the dish and rose. She took one tall narrow basket from the hamper she'd been carrying on her back and handed it to Belle, who gave her a handful of coins in return. Kidd counted the clinks automatically.

“Seven copper for that thing?” he objected.

The strange woman chuckled again, shouldered her burdens and started out the door. She passed by Kidd's chair on her way. “Little robin… the woman over at the split mountain, she got power that's no joke. Take sweet lamb to her and she'll listen to your little wants. But you'll wish you'd taken my potions instead.”

She left.

Kidd watched Belle pull a bottle of murky brown liquor out of the basket. 

“Oh.” He rolled his eyes.

“Fuckin rolling your eyes at your mother…” she complained, giving him a mild swat. She poured a finger of booze into a cup and settled back with it.

“Hey,” he made a gimme motion, and she passed him the cup, pouring another for herself. It tasted like fucking goat piss. He grimaced and took another swallow.

“So what is the Great Captain Kidd going around after witches for. Sure it's not a girl?”

“Not a girl.”

“Right,” she teased, but gave him a serious, searching look.

“What.”

“Babe… don't go fucking with that kinda shit. Okay? Whatever your little heart is after, it's not worth what _those_ types will make you pay.”

Kidd put his head back down on the table, grumbling indistinctly to himself.

Belle persisted, “Look, I know what the fuck I'm talking about. I've had shit I thought I wanted before. I thought I'd give anything for it. But when it came to it, the price they ask… it'll rip your soul out. It's never worth it.”

“Yeah, fine. Got it.” He motioned for a top-up.

“Specially not for some fuckin girl.”

“Hah. I promise there's no girl.”

“Mrmhm. Sure,” she muttered into her cup.

He rotated his own cup idly between his palms. “But what if, um… What if there _was_ someone, though? And it wasn't, like, a… a girl-someone.”

“Hrm?” Belle put the cup down and frowned.

He shrugged, looking down.

“...the fuck?” She studied him, forehead crinkling deeper and deeper in alarm. “Kidd? Honey, listen to me, you don't have to do that. The shit I do, it's not—”

“Not like that! I mean—” 

“It's not real love.”

“I’m not talking about that! I mean if it was for real, like, not like, just…” Kidd grasped for the words for what he meant but could only repeat himself. 

Belle wasn't listening anyway. “Which one of the fucking pervs is it?! You can't trust the assholes that come up here, creeps and liars, I don't care what he's been telling you—”

“None of them! There's no one! I'm just saying, what if… what if I did have… someone, and they were maybe not a girl…”

She spoke in a rush over him until he trailed off. “Nonono, you’re not gonna do that, it's gonna be okay for you. Okay? You're gonna find a lady, a sweet little thing with giant tits and big doe eyes. You're gonna get married and have your own babies, heaps of sons, and, and…”

That all sounded like a fucking drag, on top of being more far-fetched than hanging out with harpies and mermaids. Or getting away to some island called Trafalgar… He waited for her to run out of frantic words, rolling his empty cup across the table between his hands.

“Well, if there's anything left of me to marry off by then, you're fucking welcome to try.” He let it roll away from him and got up.

“Where the fuck are you going??”

“Smithy, Belle. It's the middle of the day.”

“Oh. Well what are you even doing up here when you're supposed to be working anyway! Git outta here, fuckin bum…” She gave a forced laugh and pulled the bottle toward her again as Kidd went out of the shadowed interior and into the glaring daylight.

One of Belle's more well-off regulars was just coming up the hill to pay her a visit. “Morning, young man, isn't it a pleasant—”

“Shut up Greg.”

The chinless creep frowned as Kidd passed him by. “Now now, manners don't cost—”

“Choking down _that_ crap sure as fuck costs more’n the usual, Greg. Have a shit day.”

* * *

Kidd went out of his way to find a good fight on the way back to the village. He found Bartolomeo and Cavendish—the village's main troublemakers—messing with the scrawny Diez kid, Drake. They were trying to get him to kill a turtle or something, with the knife his father had petitioned council to let him have before the usual fifteen years. Far from discouraging tormentors, it seemed to attract them.

The long-toothed Barto and his blond companion welcomed the new challenge, and they taunted Drake until he'd squared up opposite Kidd. Drake's stance was awkward and he held his knife like a fistful of bread, but he didn't waver. 

Kidd knocked the knife out of his hand easily, and then discarded his own in favor of fists. That soon got old too—no challenge—and he let Drake run before turning to the smirking pair who were standing back and watching.

“I'll take the pretty one next,” Kidd eyed up Cavendish with a sneer. He'd definitely take a tussle with this trim little jackdaw over some doughy girl any day.

“You giving it away for free now?” Cavendish retorted, closing the gap between them.

Kidd grinned. “Come get some.”

“Cav,” Barto grunted, frowning. “Get away from him—”

“Barto, shut the fuck up,” Cavendish commanded.

Barto caught Cav's arm and dragged him back. “You wanna get your prissy face messed up? Step back and lemme show ya how—unhh!!”

Cavendish elbowed Barto hard in the face before throwing a punch at Kidd, and Kidd threw one back before Barto got between them and elbowed Cav and punched Kidd and yeah. The fight got severe fast. It also got broken up fast, though—someone’s vigilant farm hands were soon pulling them apart. Drake probably hadn't snitched, but they were right in the middle of the main road so someone was bound to step in sooner or later. 

They all got hauled down to the council house, nursing split lips and bruised elbows. Kidd waited inside the one-room building, watching from a window as Barto and Cavendish got their handful of strokes with the cane. Cavendish's pale skin bruised like anything, and he squirmed and yelped loudly. Barto tried to keep up a tough front but he was bitching just as loud.

“It’s almost like you want to end up here or something,” Kidd's usual punishment sighed from the door.

Kidd ignored the gloating councilman.

A knobbly hand directed him away from the window and to his knees. “Come on, then. Get going,” Kizaru directed, almost irritably.

Kidd didn't even have to think about what he was doing, or who was in front of him. He let his mind drift back to the fight, and to the source of the pained yelps outside. If he imagined tender, bruiseable skin against his and clever fingers in his hair, this could almost be something he—

“Nngh! Ah damn it, damn it, hold it… Nah it's no use, it's, nghhh…” Kizaru was suddenly pulling out out Kidd's mouth and trailing his mess onto the floor. “Too damn fast.”

Kidd wiped his chin with a grimace of utter disgust.

“You should try drawing it out a little more,” the towering man recommended.

No response. Kidd was back at the window, and Kizaru didn't seem to really want an answer anyway. He left.

Cavendish and Bartolomeo had finished their punishment too. They got their tunics back on and stumbled away, supporting each other even as they cussed at each other. Something deep and ugly rose in his throat as Kidd watched them leave together. _Someday,_ he was gonna find a real fucking witch, get real power, and then every last fuckhead in the village would see what it was like to have nothing and no one...

He sighed and pushed back from the window, realizing that he was alone, muttering and scheming uselessly to himself. He crossed to the head councilwoman's chair at the center of the room and slung himself into it.

"I order you all to go fuck yourselves," he decreed to the empty room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay I feel like I need to explain this chapter a little. Basically kidd is trying to figure out his sexuality in a way that isn't defined by abuse, and everyone is being super unhelpful. And then it's almost moot in the end bc what he really wants is a someone.


	6. Trafalgar

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kidlaw content at last. This chapter basically just sums up the entire first part of the series, from kidds perspective, in a really rushed way... I actually really recommend going back and reading the original selkie skin if you haven't already. Things will make way more sense. Like, what the fuck are selkies vs. shifters and where do witches fit in, and is Tragalgar all of these things? (Answer is yes haha).   
> Anyway, the next chapter will pick up immediately after the events of selkie skin.

Kidd wasn't in the habit of rescuing anybody, but he also wasn’t in the habit of throwing away a gift dropped in his lap. Especially when it was the sea that’d brought him the gift, like an answer to all the times he’d ever doubted the faraway worlds hinted at in sailors’ tattoos and broken crates.

There was a boy slumped unconscious in the waves at Kidd’s feet. An amazing boy—stranger than the basket woman, prettier than Cavendish, around Kidd's age, and mostly alive, too. And he was a  _ shifter. _ It would have been strange for an ordinary human to make it to this shore alive, but the cormorant coming to examine the injured boy and then shifting into a man before Kidd's eyes had confirmed it. The two creatures had conferred, seeming to know one another, but then the cormorant-man had left the boy there in the surf and flown away. The lone figure had pulled himself together long enough to strip off his clothing and return to the water, before collapsing again.

Kidd perched on a nearby boulder after the bird-shifter had left, looking over the unconscious boy again and again… and then to the pile of clothing he'd left drying on the shore. Finding the smooth-furred, spotted seal Skin just sitting there among the rest of the strange clothing, Kidd decided to go along with what was clearly fate. 

He took the selkie's Skin, and felt a sudden rush of giddy possibility. 

“Holy shit! Holy shit…”

He ran with it to the crack in the cliffside and stuffed it under a rock, but then felt bad. The thing wasn’t just the usual sea debris—it was a piece of someone living. He took it and ran over to a better rock.

“Oh my god, holy shit…”

He tried fitting it in a few other places, folding and refolding it, marvelling at its sleek softness. He kept petting the fur before realizing that, being a living piece of someone, that might be weird. He blushed and looked around at the seal shifter. Still out cold…

The Skin actually felt cold, for something that was supposed to be alive. Was that normal? Looking closer, Kidd could see a couple of cuts in it, too. He wiped absently at the blood slicking the pale belly area before he realized where it had come from. He folded up the Skin and hid it away again, and then went back to hover and observe its owner anxiously (from behind the boulder). The damage was mirrored on the shifter's body too—there was a bad wound in his thigh, and another in his side. Well, Kidd could totally stitch those up for him, and take care of him, and it'd be fine. Right? Unless there was worse injuries? Shit, what if the shifter was actually really badly hurt and already dying...

But then the strange boy coughed and shook himself awake, with a businesslike attitude that wasn't at all sick or weak. The shifter looked down at his injuries, then huffed disapprovingly at the setting sun, like all this was some awful inconvenience. Even without seeing his face, Kidd could read the utter pique radiating from him. Haha… Wait'll he figured out that his Skin was gone and he was captured, he'd be  _ so  _ mad.

Kidd grinned to himself and settled down on top of the boulder, like he'd been there all along.

* * *

"I'm gonna kick your ass," the selkie threatened, sitting wrapped in a blanket while Kidd dug in a chest for more bandages. They were stowed away in one of Kidd's cliffside cave hideouts, the shifter's seal Skin safely concealed a few caves away, and Kidd was having the time of his life.

"Sure ya are," he grinned.

"If I didn't have a giant fucking gash in me, I woulda already cut you up into fishbait and thrown you in the sea. You woulda never captured me."

"Yeah but you do, and I did, so." 

"..." There was a murderous silence.

"So what's your name?" Kidd ventured, taking some pieces of cloth from the chest and giving them a sniff. Smelled a little deathly, hm. He kept digging.

"I'm not fucking telling you."

"Well I won't tell you mine either then! 

"Fine by me." The selkie scowled. 

"Jesus…" Kidd found his extra bandages and went to try to put them on the shifter.

"The fuck are you doing with those!!"

This turned a whole fight and Kidd had to order him to stay still while he wrapped everything up.

"What the fuck do you want me for?" Kidd's guest worried, afterward. They were each sitting wrapped in their own blanket, on a rush mat Kidd had stolen from the village to furnish the hideout.

Kidd shrugged in his blanket. "I dunno."

This earned the biggest eyeroll yet. "As if. Everyone knows what happens to captured shifters."

"They get stitches?"

"No, you idiot!"

"You can't call me an  _ idiot," _ Kidd snarled immediately, grabbing the other and surprising both of them. 

The selkie eyed him, unafraid. "Hm."

"...anyway," Kidd grumbled, settling down again, "I just want you to talk to me."

"Talk?"

"Yeah."

"No." The selkie frowned.

"Yes.  _ Talk to me," _ Kidd ordered through his teeth.

"Fuck. About what."

"About how you got those injuries."

The strange boy bristled but was compelled to talk. He told Kidd an amazing story about a sea witch and an underwater fight, and a quest that he and his harpy sister had been sent on, to recover a cursed knife. Soon, Kidd slipped into sleep, real sleep, like he hadn't in a long time. The selkie followed not long after. They both slept and healed in the cliffside hideaway.

* * *

Two nights passed. Kidd was already convinced that stealing the selkie’s Skin was the best thing he had ever done. That wasn't a mistake, that was just  _ not _ being a dimwit. 

Promising to give him his Skin back and set him free (after seven days of his company) wasn't a mistake either. That was just  _ not _ being an evil tyrant prick.

No, the really stupid move was giving this strange new companion a name, knowing full well that he'd soon be watching him leave again. Once you named something, you had it, and could lose it. There was a reason one didn't name babies for the first few months of their lives.

“Trafalgar,” Kidd had called him, like an idiot.

“Eustass,” the shifter had named him back. 

Kidd liked the sound of ‘Eustass,’ even if it was basically the shifter's way of saying ‘random stupid soon-to-be-dead human.’ It was funny, though, and just so like the proud, prickly boy. Kidd liked everything about Trafalgar, even how much the selkie didn't like him and didn't mind telling him so. That, like the creative threats and testing fights, seemed like a game next to all the other shit going on outside, in the real world. Kidd went to the village and smithy each day before escaping all that shit and returning to the cliff at night. Trafalgar waited in the cave, and recovered from his injuries almost supernaturally fast.

* * *

The selkie seemed to be easing into Kidd’s company a little too. By their third night together in the cave hideaway under the cliff, they were finally talking like normal people probably talked when they were on friendly terms.

“If you gimme my Skin back now I'll promise to still stay here with you for the whole seven days,” Trafalgar suggested hopefully, lying on the mat opposite Kidd and fidgeting with his blanket.

“No way,” Kidd countered smugly. “I wanna keep it til then.”

“Well, you don't know how to take care of it. You'll get it all gross.”

“Not even!”

“What if it starts smelling like you, ugh.”

Kidd frowned and took a sniff of himself. “I don't smell like anything.”

“Yeah you do,” Trafalgar insisted. “You smell like animal guts and curses.”

“Well you smell like fish guts and stupid.”

“You can't smell like stupid.”

“You can't smell like curses either,” Kidd pointed out, offended.

Trafalgar raised a condescending eyebrow. “Um, you obviously don't have a lot of experience with anything magical? When someone casts a curse, or some major magic goes down, it smells like iron. Witches smell that way all the time, that's what gives them away if you meet one.”

“I knew that. Maybe I'm a witch and that's how I caught you.”

“No, you probably got cursed. You look like someone with like a bunch of curses on him.” Trafalgar surveyed Kidd's many visible scars again. He'd caught him looking at those a lot, but Kidd was used to those kinds of stares.

“I'm not cursed.” Kidd grumbled. “And I told you already, I work in a fuckin smithy, so that's what it is. Here, you should check out my dirk, did I tell you I made it myself? Just try holding it—”

“Ugh, fine.” The selkie held out his hand and Kidd excitedly gave him the long, smoothly tapered knife. He turned it over a couple times and seemed pretty impressed. Kidd thought it was weird for him to smell it, though.

“It’s steel,” Kidd explained, “which has a lot of iron in it, so yeah, I guess that's what smells that way. I do iron horseshoes and nails and stuff too.”

“Hm. But you  _ do _ also smell like curses, or like you been around em. You hang around a lot of witches or something? Heh.”

“No… I dunno. I been meaning to go see one, though.”

Trafalgar gave him a perturbed look. “Why?”

“Ah, the usual shit, I guess,” Kidd sighed, turning onto his back and watching the shadows from the dying fire flicker on the ceiling of the cave.

“A girl? Or whatever?” the selkie probed casually.

“Nah, the girls aren't the worst of em.”

“Worst of what?”

“Like,” Kidd clarified, “if I'm gonna go to a witch and pay their insane price, it's not the women that I need dead more than anyone else. Maybe I could just curse the tits off em…” He looked over when the selkie was silent. 

Trafalgar met his gaze and then rolled his eyes away again. “You’re fulla shit.”

“I’m not! There's a witch I know of, she lives in a split mountain a few hours from here and if you take her a sacrifice of lamb she'll come out and you can ask her stuff. I've gotten up close before, even saw the old sacrifices on stakes.”

“Whatever. Even if you're not cursed, there's something weird up with you.”

It was Kidd's turn to go silent. Shit, he'd been trying to come across normal. That was probably pointless, though—everyone could tell just from looking how fucked up he was.

“I'm going to sleep,” Kidd announced abruptly. He closed his eyes stubbornly, very aware of the sharp gaze that was still on him. Even so, he fell into that deep, real sleep once again, and dreamed of escape and the sea.

* * *

The fourth night, Kidd fell asleep with a selkie nestled on his shoulder. His wounds from the day had all been magically healed, and his heart was fluttering like a little robin in his chest. He had a someone, and maybe that was all he needed. 

* * *

There really wasn't much sleeping done that fourth night. They kept waking up, excited, to talk and touch and whatever.

"I like your scars," the selkie told Kidd, exploring his many marks with a deft hand. "If I had a human Skin I'd want it to look like yours."

Kidd thought that was cute as hell. "Human Skin, haha… You don't think the scars look fucked up?"

"No? You look like a fighter should look. Even if you can't fight for shit."

Kidd let that last part slide. "Well maybe I actually am a human shifter, and when I go up to the village every day I'm just, like, a sheep, wearing a human Skin around like a cape. You ever think of that, huh?"

Trafalgar made an undignified laugh sound into his hand. "Take it off and prove it then!"

"No way, then you'd capture me too."

"I think it'd be just fair, though," the selkie argued. "If we both had each other's Skins. It's fucked up that you have mine and I have to do what you tell me to."

"I don't ever tell you to do anything though."

"You ordered me not to fuck up my stitches!"

Kidd rolled his eyes. "Well yeah."

"And you ordered me to stay here with you for seven days," he pointed out.

"Yeah but you said you'd stay anyway."

Trafalgar rolled his eyes right back. "Yeah, but if I'm here cuz I  _ have _ to be, it still means I'm not here cuz  _ wanna _ be."

They talked and talked about other stuff as the stars slowly tracked toward dawn, but that stuck with Kidd. 

* * *

When he went out to the smithy on that fifth morning, Kidd left the selkie's Skin somewhere Trafalgar would find it, if he went looking.

* * *

Trafalgar did find it. He still stayed. He wanted his full seven days too.

* * *

It was also on the fifth day that some bad shit caught up with Kidd, back in the village. It's pointless to say exactly what happened. Honestly, Kidd couldn't remember most of it anyway.

The fifth night Kidd spent with his selkie again, as close as before. But now it seemed naive to think that just one 'someone'—even this selkie-someone with all his mysterious healing abilities—could change the ill-fated fuckstorm Kidd had been born into. Maybe this brief something was all he’d get: seven glimmering days, and then just… just more nothing and no one. That’d be the cruelest joke of all. Kidd didn’t think he could take that.

* * *

"Swimming is like flying," the selkie was telling Kidd, trying to distract him from his unspoken pains. 

Trafalgar never pushed him to explain all the scars, or the things that happened when the human left for the day and came back more damaged than before. And Kidd wouldn't have told him if he'd asked. Especially not this. 

Kidd could feel his broken bones still gluing magically back together. It didn't hurt, it was just weird. Or maybe it did hurt—it was always hard to tell at this stage. He was lying on his back, staring up at the ceiling and nothing, with the selkie resting his head on an arm on Kidd's chest. It was good that way—he could feel Trafalgar's low voice reverberating on the skin of his neck, and idle fingers playing at his collar bone.

"I'm gonna teach you how to swim. You'll like it. It's all quiet under there, and slow. Even sunlight is slower than abovewater—it looks like hair waving."

_ That's never gonna happen, _ Kidd thought. "Sounds cool," he said.

"If you learn to hold your breath long enough, there's all kinds of shipwrecks and stuff, we can go see."

"Mm."

The selkie paused. "You don't wanna?"

"I do wanna, yeah," Kidd roused himself from his dull malaise to give him an encouraging caress. "I want all the stuff you're talking about. I just… don't think I can."

"Doesn't matter if you're not a selkie, you can still learn to swim."

"That's not what I meant."

The uncertain silence continued a little longer. 

"... I don't know either, whether I can or not," Trafalgar said slowly. "I've got kind of a bad situation going on right now, with my family. Stuff is really messed up. But… I  _ wanna." _

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. I wanna go swimming, somewhere, with you."

Kidd took a deep breath and didn't say anything.

The selkie shrugged and started drumming his fingers on Kidd's collar bone again. "I dunno if I can, like I said. But I dunno. Can we just... think about it like, as though that's how it'll be? Just for now?"

"Yeah. Just tell me about how it is down there."

The selkie spun his fantasy future for them, and Kidd listened. 

"Where we're going, the seafloor just drops off into the deep all of a sudden, and it's so clear, you can see down and down, until it gets dark. You can float there, and it's like there's nothing in the world but you—us, if we go together. And then you come up for air, and if you've been under a long time that first breath is like you've never breathed before…"

* * *

On the sixth day, the selkie kissed Kidd and told him he wasn’t gonna kill him after all (but that they'd probably both die anyway because, in a surprise twist, it was the selkie who'd been cursed). 

"So why can't you ask your family to help you get un-cursed?" Kidd was wondering, sitting with the selkie in their cave and trying to puzzle this out. "Aren't you part of some big powerful war clan?"

"They will kill me when they find out about this."

Kidd almost laughed, but Trafalgar's face stopped him. He swallowed instead. "And you can't un-curse yourself? With your like, healing power stuff?"

_ "No. _ Or, I dunno. I don't really know how to do all that spellcraft stuff yet."

"Oh. So what do you wanna do?"

Trafalgar looked down, chipping away at the rock floor with his nails while he thought. "What I  _ wanna _ do is just, like…" he murmured eventually, trailing off.

"What. C'mon."

"Listen. It's none of your fuckin business," the selkie shot at him sternly. "You don't know how fucked up my family is. And it's not shit you can help with anyway."

"You don't know that."

Trafalgar hugged his knees. "Yes I do. I fucking know there's nothing you can do about… how you're born, or your family, or… fucking anything." 

Kidd sat back, rubbing his face wearily. "Yeah. I know."

"...yeah."

"So what you wanna do?

"Haha..." The selkie gave up with a helpless shrug. "What I  _ want _ , is what I told you last night."

"What?" Kidd was lost. "You wanna go swimming?"

"Ugh, no! Or. Yes? I just wanna go somewhere, where there's only stuff that feels good, like deep water, and cold air, and  _ you. _ I don't fucking know how. It's just what I want."

Kidd was having the weirdest emotion at hearing this—something like anger and frantic happiness and hopelessness. It felt like shit.

"Well why don't we just GO then?" he burst out.

"Because then," Trafalgar stated dully, "My family would kill us both, instead of just me. And don't even say 'let em try' or whatever you're about to say—"

Kidd closed his mouth, swallowing those exact words.

"—because they just will. They will find us, and everything will be over."

"Trafalgar…"

"Nonono just shut up literally for once. You know what I want? I want my fucking seven days. Okay?"

Trafalgar's posture said there was no room for debate. He was so calmly determined, fingers clenched on his knees and shoulders set. The exact image of strength and composure and everything an otherworldly creature of sea and sorcery should be.

Kidd looked at him, and felt his heart beating in his throat so hard it was painful. 

* * *

Kidd knew himself, and he knew he wasn't any kind of paragon of strength, or calm acceptance, or anything like that. He was a fuckup nobody, and probably always would be. So.

So he went about his next probable fuckup with desperate determination, gambling away his last night of respite in the oasis he'd called Trafalgar, for the faint possibility that the selkie’s way out could be his too. Kidd took the cursed Skin, left his selkie behind, and went to bargain with dark powers for a way to break the curse.

If it had been a journey of the kind set down in lore (and not just some peasant brat scratching and snarling after stolen scraps of a life worth living) it would have been written like this:

_ The thief went that night on a path from hungry witch to hungry witch. A shell game of flesh tithes won from each his passage but not his freedom, and set aswirl the cross-purposes of those many dark currents. And he along with them, for he'd made himself the tithe. _

But to Kidd, the whole trip was just another version of the same gauntlet he walked every fucking day on his way from smithy to hometown cliff. Just a string of bored assholes and bullshit rules trying to trip him up and take a piece outta him for no reason—heartbreakingly mundane for all he'd imagined magic to be. It fucking figured that harpies and mermaids and whatever did exist after all, and they were all DICKS. In any case, this meant that magical shit, like any other shit, was mostly a matter of loopholes, bribery, and quick talking. And that, he could manage. 

He went on his path from witch to witch.

First, the split-mountain witch, crude and cackling. “Dimwit,” she called him, taking his little flesh offering and sending him along with something just as small.

Then the harpy, jealous and fierce. "Dead meat!" was her petty promise as she tried to make a sacrifice of him.

The sea witch, regal and exacting. “Pitiful,” she deemed him with relish, set to consume him.

And finally, the selkie. Young, new to his powers. And really, in no position to grant anything to anyone.

* * *

"I want out of here," Kidd made his final pitch to this final mage. He'd brought a way to lift the curse in offering—that should be worth something. And it was such a simple ask. "Anywhere, I don't care, just take me somewhere that's not here."

Trafalgar sat before him, looking far less calm and certain than he had before. "I can't. I… I don't even—"

"Please!"

"Eustass-ya, I don't have the freedom or power you think I do."

"Shit…" Kidd was starting to realize that he should have known that. He'd done all this fucking backwards.

"I want to. You have no fucking idea how much I want to," Trafalgar told him. "But I told you, I can't even escape my own fucking family. It's not just the Skin being cursed or the rest of that shit, it's… it's just how it is. I don't know how to change it."

He sounded like he really meant it, and it made Kidd feel selfish and shitty.

"I'm  _ sorry—" _

"I know. It's okay."

* * *

It was the end of the seventh day by this point. Their time was up. Law was expected elsewhere.

Kidd sat on the boulder where he’d first found his selkie prize, and watched Trafalgar wade back out into the sea. Headed for his own usual hell; leaving Kidd to his. What else could they fucking do, though?

The selkie didn’t leave him with nothing. He gave Kidd his real name—Law—and a little lock of sleek black hair. It smelled like curses and the sea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, to recap: selkies are only one type of a whole range of shifters. All shifters, like selkies, are vulnerable to capture if someone steals their Skin. Anyone, human or shifter, can have spellcasting abilities, but it's pretty rare, and costly to use. Like, one person in every village might have vague herb-finding powers, and probably suffers some persistent sickness from using it. Witches are spellcrafters reviled for consuming people to fuel their powers, and for charging obscene prices for magical favours.  
> Okay that's it. More soon, maybe in a couple days.


	7. Belle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No warnings, just a lot of stupid and sad.  
> I feel like I've lost control of this fic a little bit, so all this different stuff comes out in a big pile, and the tone is all over the place, and theres not even any KidLaw to keep the interest. But that's okay. We are messy and honey, we are very emotional about kidd, and that's okay. Just gotta cut myself off of editing and just post already.

The first thing Kidd did after his selkie had gone was drag himself into the cave and fall into an exhausted sleep. He slept like the dead and woke as tired and empty as he’d been before. It was dark out by the time he woke up. He stared at the ceiling, rubbing the closed-over wound on his scalp where he’d cut away a piece of himself to bargain with. The selkie had healed all his injuries before departing, but Kidd could still feel them throbbing persistently, somewhere in the back of his awareness.

The second thing Kidd did was try to go right back to the split-mountain witch. But this proved more difficult than just taking off again. 

He stopped by his uncle’s house on the way, where he could clean up and change his clothes in the smithy, undisturbed. Kidd’s unfinished work from the other day was still sitting there, and he suppressed a wave of guilt. 

Then he stopped by his mother’s house, just to see if everything was okay. It was dark inside when he approached, and he felt suddenly hopeful. Maybe no visitors tonight? Maybe they were all already asleep? Kidd slipped inside the door without a sound and waited for his eyes to adjust.

“Cap’n Kidd, that great wanderer. Jus taking off whenever he wants…”

Kidd tensed at his mother’s unsteady voice. She was sitting at the table, wrapped in a shawl but still in her work clothes. She looked haggard.

“Where’s the girls,” he grunted back.

Belle gestured to the straw pallet where he usually slept, at two little figures snoring away, only half covered by their blankets in the chill air. Kidd went over and frowned at their stillness. Nami wasn’t even fussing.

“You been out screwin around for days, and here I am, working like a fuckpig. On my back all day. The grease’ll never come out, s'like fuckin pitch…”

Kidd ignored her rambling. He jostled Nojiko, then Nami. They slept on. “Did you fucking liquor em up again?” 

She snorted angrily. “You drunk?”

“Jesus, you fucking did, didn't you."

"Well the FUCK am I supposed to do if they makin noise, and here I am tryna make a living, and who knows where in the fuck YOU are. Prolly off thievin and fuckin…"

"At least make a fire while you’re sitting around,” he shot back.

“Ahh, you’re fuckin drunk, I knew it. You’re drunk and coming in here, talkin shit, causing trouble…” 

She kept up a stream of muttered insults and accusations, while he built a low fire with burnt ends. It didn’t take long for him to start snapping back at her. She had a bruise on her face… Kidd avoided looking at it, but it nagged at him as persistently as his own ghost pains and made him angrier.

“Go the FUCK to bed, Belle!” he burst out finally. “Drunken fuckpig. GO.”

She kicked the stool at him and stumbled to her feet. She looked like she was gonna start something, but the spinning room probably convinced her to give it up. She stormed off instead.

“This is MY HOUSE! Shit-ass Kidd!” Belle disappeared into the other room and banged the door shut.

_ "Your _ fucking house??" 

Kidd kicked the stool across the room and it broke against the wall. Fuck. Now he’d have to fix that too before he… before he left.

The door to the other room was a little bit open. Belle was a lump of grubby petticoats on the bed inside. She'd passed out with her shirt falling down, exposed but beyond caring. Kidd was gonna go in and cover her up and whatever, but he couldn’t make himself step through the door. He walked in circles around the main room instead, looking around guiltily at the meager provisions in the little house. Not enough blankets for a real winter, not for four people (or even for three). Firewood… he’d have to get a good pile ready for them. Food was a problem but he had no solution for that. And he’d always meant to rig up a pump for the well so they didn’t have to haul water by hand every time. Replace the lock on the door again. And on and on…

He felt that tiredness creep over him again. A weird kind of tired that made him want to just  _ fucking  _ break something.

The rickety little stool broke into several more pieces against the wall, and then the empty liquor bottle, before Kidd got himself under control.

_ "Fuck…"  _

He got into his bed with a heavy sigh. Looked like he wasn't going anywhere just yet. He put a shivering baby on either side of him and wrapped the blankets around them all. The little bodies gradually became warm bundles against his side, so that was good. He kinda wished that the warm spots were someone else beside him… He felt in his pocket for the little fold of cloth with the selkie's hair, and let his thoughts drift before falling back into his exhausted sleep.

\---

Kidd woke to late morning light in his face and an angry noise in his ear.

“KEH!” Nami demanded, already wide awake.

“Shut up,” he mumbled.

“KEHHH,” she insisted, smacking his face angrily.

_ “What. _ Jesus.”

“She wants to eat,” Belle bustled into the room, her hair up and her dress fresh. She went around picking up soiled rags and pieces of clothing for the wash.

"Well aren't you up early," Kidd commented snidely.

"Shut up. The fuck is that," she pointed at the broken pieces of glass and wood on the floor.

"I dunno, Belle. Looks like someone was drinking."

"Clean it up. It's a fucking dump in here."

"You fucking clean it up," Kidd growled.

“BEH,” Nami addressed Belle instead, crawling toward her.

"Babygirl!" Belle came and picked her up, all cutesy talk and cheeriness. Kidd watched as she busily set about boiling wash water and broth, acting all businesslike and avoiding his eyes. The girls toppled around on stumpy legs, getting in her way and laughing.

He got up with a scoff and went to clean up the fucking glass and whatever before the girls stepped on it. When he came back in from dumping the mess, Belle had already pulled the blankets off his pallet to wash. She was frowning at a little fold of cloth in her hand.

"That's mine!!" Kidd made a grab for it as Belle held it away.

"What is it?" She started untying it. "Money?"

"No, don't look, just give it! Just—"

She swatted him away and he surprised himself by shoving her. Belle paused, stunned, and he grabbed the cloth from her hand.

"Okay, now what in the  _ fuck—" _ she started, with danger in her voice.

"Don't touch my fuckin stuff…"

"Don't you fucking start acting like a rough guy with me, do you hear me? I will kick your ratty ass out of this house so fast… 

"Sorry, whatever, shut up…" he mumbled at her in guilty anger, pulling on his boots and stuffing the cloth into his pocket. 

He banged his way out of the house and hesitated only briefly at the crossroads, before steering himself down the hill toward the smithy. If he really hustled, he figured he could get all that unfinished stuff done that day, and then he could take that other road and just…  _ go.  _ No regrets, no guilt, just be gone.

\---

By the end of the day Kidd knew it was gonna take a hell of a lot longer than that, even working lightning speed like he was. There was all the work leftover from when he’d gone off with the selkie, and then a shitload of axe heads and whatever now that it’d turned cold and people were suddenly all worried about winter. And then the old hand pump he was trying to repair and the door latch…

He put down his hammer and shook out his arm. Maybe a couple days to finish stuff? And after that he could go.

“Five minutes, boy,” Genzo warned.

“Yeah…”

Kidd massaged his shoulder and walked around looking at everything distractedly, still trying to calculate how long it'd all take. Genzo watched him.

"What." The old man questioned bluntly.

Kidd shot a confused look at him. “What?”

“You’re musing on something.”

“I’m not musing on anything, I’m just—”

“Out with it. Where you been this whole past week, boy? Causing shit that’ll come back on us?”

“No, you old fuck.”

Genzo glared suspiciously. 

Kidd avoided his eye for a while, still looking around without actually seeing anything. But then he shrugged. “Just, um, thinking. About what’d happen if… if I wasn’t here anymore.”

“...What.”

“Like, if that infection had got me, like Muriel said it would. Or something else, I dunno. And I just fuckin, died or whatever.”

_ “Hmph.” _ This seemed to sour Genzo's already bad mood. The old man scowled under his mustache and huffed a couple times. Then he turned back to his work without a word. 

Kidd took his cue and got back to work too, angry at himself for being so sentimental. What the fuck should he care what happened to these assholes without him? They never wondered about the stuff that happened to him. 

“The babies’d go first,” Genzo spoke up, after a long silence.

Kidd stopped hammering. 

“Wouldn’t be like whenever Belle takes off, with all us here mostly able to take care of our own selves. Even if she stayed after you went, she’s not… she’s… well, you seen how she is these days. Getting herself sick. It’d be the babies first, soon as it gets real cold, then Belle, not long after. Then us old ones, though probably not for a while.”

That was all. Kidd didn’t respond and Genzo seemed to figure the matter over and done.

Kidd got back to work, but his arm felt slow and heavy.

\---

He worked steadily. Thinking, but trying not to. If he over-thought this, he’d never fucking get anywhere, and he needed to get out. 

Night came quickly, these shortening days. Genzo left him to finish up in the evening light and went away, sighing, but keeping his silence. Kidd ignored him and worked until his arm refused to keep going. He made up his mind to sleep at the smithy and start again early, but made the mistake of going to check on things at home first. Just quickly, he thought, hurrying up the hill. Not long enough to get into a fight with Belle or anything.

As soon as he got inside to see the fireplace cold and the babies alone on the floor, he felt the house snap closed on him like a trap. He glanced through the door to the other room, where Belle was sleeping off another stupor. He left her where she was. When it was like this, it was gonna be like this for some days… He’d have to wait a little more.

“You guys suck,” he told the angry little potatoes. 

“Keh!” Nami commanded.

“Keh…” Nojiko echoed sadly.

“Fuck,” he swore.

“Feh.”

\---

He overslept again, so didn't manage to get out of the house before Belle and the girls woke. He rolled his eyes as his mother bustled in like before—still acting like nothing was wrong. He got up to go, before another fight started, but she caught him.

“Take the girls today. Just give em to Muriel to look after,” Belle told him, pointing to the babies. 

“Muriel’s off doing some sheep thing with the Diez women today,” Kidd objected.

“Well I got some regulars coming, and having these things running around’ll be a fuckin nightmare.”

“Could always just booze em up again.”

He got a slipper to the back of his head. “Shut your hole. Take Nami at least.”

Kidd rubbed his head and gave in halfway. “I’ll take Nojiko.”

“No, take Nami and just tie her to a chair in the smithy. She’ll like the noise.”

“Fuck,” he grumbled.

“FEH!” Nami exclaimed.

Belle looked down at the red-headed child in confusion. “Who the fuck is ‘Feh?’”

Kidd stood and went grumbling around, getting some stuff together. He took out the sack and strip of old blanket that he used to carry the babies around whenever he needed to work and watch them at the same time. Nami was pretty cooperative while he strapped her into place.

“‘Father,’” he suggested to Belle on the way out, with Nami bundled up and peeking over his shoulder.

“...huh?”

“Nami’s tryna say ‘father.’”

He left Belle standing in numb silence and felt a little smug. It took him until the blackwood to feel bad about the lie. Well, fuck fathers anyway. Who needed em, uncles were shitty enough. And  _ mothers _ … ugh.

“Prolly best if you never learn that one ‘f’ word,” he told the lump on his back. 

Nami was quiet for once. She seemed to like any kind of movement, and would sometimes only quiet down when carried or rocked in a sling. Probably busy looking around at everything.

“Nami:” Kidd prompted over his shoulder, and she perked up. “Say, ‘fuck.’”

“Feh.”

“'Fuuuck.'”

“Fuh.”

He smiled. “Good girl.”

\---

“A goddamn baby,” Genzo growled as soon as Kidd came in.“A goddamn baby in a smithy.”

“Just for today.”

“Zoh,” Nami greeted Genzo. “FUH!”

The drooping mustache twitched and Genzo squinted at her. “That baby just cuss me out?”

“Nice,” Kidd approved under his breath, then went to rig up a spot for Nami before his uncle could object any more. 

He got the little potato sack hanging from a rafter where she could see them working. She seemed happy enough, just looking at things and babbling baby stuff. And it seemed like Belle had been right about the noise—Nami settled right into the rhythm of it, and even seemed to be trying to talk along with it.

But after a few hours of watching the same thing, she was fucking done.

“Get her quiet,” Genzo growled as she bawled and bawled.

“If you can hear her, your hammer’s not busy enough,” Kidd challenged.

He went back to his work, trying to keep up his furious pace from the previous day. Genzo took his challenge to heart, and doubled the rate of his hammering. Ringing blows competed with shrill baby cries, and the rest of the morning passed in a clamor. 

“God fucking dammit…” the noise was getting in Kidd’s head. He rubbed his temples.

“Get her a biscuit or something! Anything!” Genzo ordered.

“Fine.”

Kidd thumped into the house and stuffed a couple bites in his own mouth before bringing food back out with him. 

The crying had stopped. Shit, the old man had probably stuffed her in a trunk.

“The hell?” Kidd entered the smithy to find Genzo waving some little spinning contraption at Nami and chuckling gruffly under his mustache. Nami was watching the whirling motion with glee, laughing when the old man spun it fast.

“What you looking at,” Genzo barked at Kidd.

Kidd shrugged and stared. “Is that a weather vane?”

“You got eyes. You tell me.”

“Where’d you find such a tiny one?”

The old man scowled and passed the delicate little thing to him before taking a wedge of cheese and stumping off back to work. “I gotta make some kinda thing that's not just ox shoes. A man goes odd if he don’t have a diversion.”

“Except if he’s already cracked.”

“Shut up! Stick her outside. The wind’ll move the thing and keep her entertained.”

Kidd looked at the tiny redhead. She was starting to fuss again, whining at the motionless little bird shape on top of the weather vane. “That all you wanted?”

“Keh!”

“What.”

“FUH.”

Low, dusty wheezing burst out from across the smithy and Kidd stared at the gleeful old man.

“Baby cussed you out,” Genzo clutched his knees and laughed.

\---

Kidd was almost starting to think that he shouldn't leave. Not couldn't—he  _ could,  _ anytime—but maybe he didn't want to yet. The girls needed to be older before they could get by without him. Belle needed to recover from this slump. He could wait.

\---

At end of day, he tied the noisy little blanket bundle to his back again, and started home. Nami calmed as he walked, and eventually fell asleep. Kidd was too tired to register his surroundings, and maybe that's why he was caught by surprise.

"I hear…" a drawling voice intruded, through the blackwood ahead of him. "I  _ hear _ you took an unexpected new customer."

Kidd froze automatically as Kizaru came down the path toward him.

"That right, boy? Speak up."

"Sir..."

"I'm talking about that Diez lout. He come messing with you?" The tall man paused a little ways from Kidd, buffing his nails on his coat with apparent boredom.

"I didn't do—"

"In answer to the damage sustained by his weakling son, so he says. So he says... So, so, so. I guess what I'm asking is, are you the cause of all that trouble?"

"No."

"No? You didn't cut up young Drake's face like that? I got an entire gaggle of boys who all say they saw you do it."

"Shit…" Kidd couldn't help backing away, and Kizaru followed with open glee.

"Incorrigible young  _ Kidd…" _

"Keh?"

Both men halted.

Nami stirred and yawned and started up her usual noisy blather. "Kehhh!! Keh ahhh aaawh. Keh Zoh BEH…" 

Nami's voice was small but piercing, and carried like a lark's call. Kidd watched his adversary's face grow wary and irritated. After a moment, Kizaru scoffed. He walked up to Kidd, but then past him, sneering at the tiny girl on his back.

"Well, I was only looking to see that justice was served," he sniffed, turning and walking back toward the village. "And ol' Diez says he took his price outta ya, so all's as it should be, ehhh?"

\---

Belle was awake and alone with Nojiko when Kidd came hurrying in the door. She was about halfway in the bag… well, at least she was conscious and dressed. Kidd shoved the door shut and bolted it with a hard clunk.

"Kidd, babe…" Belle murmured, shaking her head and hiccuping.

_ "What." _

"Kidd, Kidd Kidd. My baby Kidd, haha."

"God, just shut it, Belle. Just… not right now."

Belle lolled her head and smiled sourly at some inner memory. "All my babies, all home together…"

Kidd ignored his mother while he unrolled Nami onto the bed to join a weepy Nojiko. He gave them each some hard biscuit to gum at with their sprouting teeth. Nami in particular was getting some wicked little dagger fangs, and went through biscuit like nothing. He watched her eat for a long moment, as delayed adrenaline bubbled in his system. 

She made an angry screech when he picked her up to hold her.

"You don't gotta shut up or anything," he told her, as she squirmed. "Just keep making good noise."

He let her go and started building up the fire, intending to make some pea mush. Belle was soon nodding into her chest, rambling more and more quietly. The girls settled into their babbling twin-talk rhythm. Kidd watched the embers flutter blue and gold, clutching the poker, mind blank as the evening darkness deepened.

"I didn't start whoring til you was born," Bellemere suddenly spilled into the quiet.

Kidd dropped the fire poker, and ash puffed up from the hearth. "Kff! Kff kff… what the fuck, Belle."

"It wasn't cuz I wanted to, baby."

"Jesus. Belle, I fucking said  _ not now. _ I can't hear this shit right now."

"I love you guys so… s-so, so much..."

_ Shit. _

Kidd managed to stay in place, not reacting, until first Belle, then the babies started to cry.

He bolted.


End file.
